14 Years & Counting

Edition #758

☀️ Good morning! ☕

This team has been eliminated from the playoffs for a month, maybe more, but last night with a 32-26 OT loss to the Dolphins, the Jets were officially eliminated.

That means that the Jets extend their playoff drought to 14 years and counting, that’s still the longest in North American Sports with only the Buffalo Sabres and their 13 years challenging us for the title.

When the Jets scored 20+ points under Saleh they were 17-7 (13-3 over the last three years, since he’s been gone the Jets are 1-5. The issue under Saleh is that we could rarely score 20 points. It’s ironic that we’ve been able to do that 6 times since he was fired, yet without him this defense seems to have no backbone.

Just add that as another wrinkle into the nightmare that is the 2024 season.

Off-topic, but I know of interest to many. Hours after the Jets were officially eliminated from the playoffs it was revealed that Juan Soto had agreed to a 15-year $765 million deal with the Mets, which instantly brightened my mood this morning. For all the details and reaction to that move, make sure you head over to Mets Fix - I’ve not had time this morning to listen to the podcast yet, but I’m sure JB and the gang will be pumped with that signing. I can’t wait.

Aaron Rodgers threw for 300 yards.
Aaron Rodgers didn’t turn the ball over.
Isaiah Davis rushed for his first Touchdown.
Garrett Wilson went for over 100 yards.
Davante Adams went for over 100 years.
The Dolphins rushed for just 44 yards.

The Jets still lost that football game and fell to double-digit losses for the 5th year in a row and the 8th time in the last 10 years.

The Jets haven’t been to the playoffs since 2010. They have one double-digit winning season in the last 13 years. We have 5 double-digit winning seasons since the turn of the century and 1998 was the last time we won 12 games.

Even with all that positivity above, you can’t escape the simple fact that this team has no idea how to win football games.

"When you're up in the fourth quarter, all of a sudden it starts to feel like you have a losing problem," said a dejected Garrett Wilson, "[It's like] you have a gene or some shit."

The loss last night was the 5th loss this season when holding a lead heading into the 4th quarter, which is the most in a season in franchise history…and there’s a very good chance that we add to that over the last 4 games of the season.

For all the good we saw yesterday and there was some real good moments, we still left a lot of scoring chances on the field. We weren’t overly clinical in the red-zone, we were 4/12 on third down. But I’m not going to sit here and pick too many holes with a offence that put up over 400 yards and over 25 points. That’s a game you should win if you have the personnel the Jets have on the defensive side of the ball.

Also what a great moment for Isaiah Davis who scored his first professional touchdown yesterday, that’s an important moment for the guy and should be celebrated as such.

The issue for me is that the reaction to this loss was muted. Maybe it was the Juan Soto news, but fans just seem resigned to the fact that the Jets lose close games. The Jets lose when they’re leading. The Jets lose when they should win.

It was a questionable call at the time but in hindsight, Woody Johnson’s decision to fire Robert Saleh was so incredibly idiotic. The defence is a shell of its former self and right now it couldn’t stop a nosebleed. Miscommunications and breakdowns across the board, they don’t play physical and they’re not overly fast either.

For all the positives listed below, here’s some other stats:

Tua completed 33 passes for 300+ yards, multiple touchdowns and 0 INT.
Tyreek Hill went for over 100 yards.
Waddle had 9 catches for 99 yards.
The Jets did not register a single QB hit, let alone a sack.
The Jets failed to force a turnover again.

"[I'm] extremely shocked and disappointed and frustrated -- and every other adjective you can think of," said Jeff Ulbrich, a coach who was getting head coaching hype last off-season and who now sits at 1-7 since taking over from Robert Saleh. You can’t blame everything on Ulbrich, but as the defensive coordinator, the drop off since the Saleh firing indicates that his impact paled in comparison to that of the jets former head coach.

"There's a lot of different reasons we've lost these games," Rodgers said about the Jets losing close ones. "Everybody has some skin on that. But we had opportunities on offense. Whatever happens on defense doesn't matter. We've got to get to 30, we didn't do it. We were efficient, pretty good on third down, but in the red zone we stalled out too many times."

The old penalty issues remain, with the Jets being called for 10 yesterday, which makes 22 in two weeks. The special team issues and defensive breakdowns have also become more consistent as the season went on. I’m not sure what the Jets record would be with Saleh, but I feel fairly confident that it would be better than 3-10.

Even when Anders Carlson put the Jets ahead with 52 seconds to go, I knew that at a minimum this game was heading to OT. Because that’s what the Jets do. Sanders hitting that 52 yarder was as safe a bet as you could have made, and then the Jets didn’t seem interested in playing any extra time as Tua marched down the field. To make it worse, Carlson was supposed to kick the ball out of the end-zone and trying to do too much ended up kicking it short, allowing the Dolphins to return it for good field position.

"We have to find a way to finish and close these things out," Ulbrich said. "We've got to be at our best when our best is required, and we're not getting that accomplished and I have to look at myself first." The Jets haven’t won a close game all season, they’re 0-7 in games which were decided by less than a touchdown.

Most teams will now be looking ahead to the playoffs, some have already clinched a place, some will be fighting down to the final day. A select few are already looking ahead to the off-season, some are at the start of their rebuilds like the Patriots, some like the Jaguars have some tough decisions to make. For the Jets it’s just another off-season following the same pattern as most off-seasons.

"Yeah, the expectations were high," Rodgers said. "We didn't reach them, not even close. Felt good three weeks into the season. Everybody felt real good. Since then, it's been a lot of difficult games with opportunities to win. We just didn't figure out how to win enough games. I didn't play good enough in some crunch times and we're sitting here with the record we have."

The Jets currently hold the 7th pick in the 2025 draft. Jacksonville were the only team to pick up a win yesterday of the pond dwellers lurking in the depths of the NFL. Their 10-6 win over the Titans dropped them a fair few places in the order. It seems as though it’s a race to the bottom between Las Vegas and the Giants. The Jets play the Jaguars next week.