Falling Apart

Edition #725

Good morning.

“You are what your record says you are”

Bill Parcells said it best.

The Jets right now are a poor football team. In fact, if the season were to end today they would have a top-5 draft pick.

They now have a 17% chance of making the playoffs, a 6% chance of actually winning a playoff game, a 2% chance of going to the AFC Championship game and a 1% chance of making the Super Bowl.

We brought Aaron Rodgers here to win a Super Bowl, and now that probability sits at 1%, at least for the 2024 season.

"It felt like the energy -- and it starts with me -- the energy, for whatever reason at halftime, was a little flat. It felt like it was flat before the game too… So I look at myself and what I can do to bring better energy, but we all have to do better.” Rodgers added: “I mean, Sunday Night Football on NBC, the only show on TV. I live for these games and I just don't quite understand why the energy was a little bit flat.”

Season is on the line, SNF, just traded for one of the best receivers in the game and just had news that the star pass-rusher you traded for in the pre-season is finally reported, and the energy is low?

Woody Johnson said he fired Robert Saleh because he wanted a spark. Well the team is 0-2 under Jeff Ulbrich and according to the star QB who you bent over backwards for, the team couldn’t get themselves up for a SNF clash with the Steelers with their season reeling.

If you’re not worried about that, I don’t know what to tell you.

For once the Jets didn’t start slow. At one point they were up 15-6 and it looked as though things were starting to click. Little did we know that we wouldn’t score another point the rest of the way.

It’s probably time we started to talk about Aaron Rodgers. The 40-year-old QB coming off a major injury looks a shell of his former self. His costly interception changed the momentum of the game and the Steelers never looked back.

He’s now thrown 7 interceptions in 7 games, his most in a 7-game stretch since 2010 and his 61.7% completion is the worst since 2015.

He’s right around league average right now, but the Jets didn’t go out of their way to get a league average QB. Aaron Rodgers was brought in to win games like the one against San Francisco, the one against Buffalo and the one last night, and he’s lost 0-3.

His first interception was completely on him as he tried to force a ball somewhere it was never going. That changed the momentum of the game with the Steelers turning that interception into a touchdown which cut the Jets margin to 2 at the half.

His second one was on Garrett Wilson who’s dropped pass was intercepted by Beanie Bishop Jr.

"I got to catch the damn ball," Wilson said. "I'm playing like shit right now. Got to fix it. I don't take that lightly. That was the reason we lost the game at the end of the day. [That] shit can't happen. Can't happen. It's a terrible play.

"It's like a culmination of me getting bad habits, not attacking the ball in the game and, all of a sudden, I got to fix it. I've got good hands. I've got to go use my hands and catch the damn ball."

The new star receiving duo failed to live up to the hype. Adams and Wilson combined for only eight receptions and 91 yards on 18 targets.

"I'm fired up, man," Davante Adams said. "I'm in a bad mood -- we lost the game -- ... but I'm still fired up about what this football team can do. There's a lot of talent. I mean, the offense that we have, the weapons that we have, when I'm in the huddle today multiple times I'm just looking around [at the talent] and it's kind of crazy."

The Jets had the chance to cut the Steelers lead to 5 in the third, but a Greg Zuerlein kick was blocked, as the Jets special teams season from hell continues.

After the positive work from Todd Downing in week one, I thought we abandoned the running game far too quickly last night. 40 dropbacks vs. 15 rushes is not a recipe for success.

The bravado which reverberated around the halls of 1JD earlier this season is starting to disappear, the claim that the season is still young is losing it’s muster.

“You are what your record says you are”

Our record tells us that we’re one of the worst teams in football. It says we’re the same as the Dolphins and one game better than the Patriots, who got blown away by the 1-5 Jaguars yesterday.

The only two teams we’ve beaten are the dismal Patriots and the Tennessee Titans, two teams who find themselves propping up the division.

The defence battling a number of injuries needed the offence to step up, instead it disappeared.

At one point the Jets were missing every single starter from their secondary, the unit that has carried this team for so long. It’s hard to overcome the quantity of injuries there but you have to wonder about the role of Jeff Ulbrich.

Are we asking him to do too much? Calling defensive plays and acting as Head Coach. Maybe it’s time he handed the defensive play-calling off to someone else. Although if we keep racking up the injuries, it won’t matter who’s calling plays.

"That game, especially that second half, that's not who this team is," Ulbrich said. "It's not good enough and that starts with me and the coaching staff. We can all give more and we will give more. We have what we need. That's not who we are. Extremely disappointed."

How many times do we have to hear the phrase ‘that’s not who this team is’?

That’s a staple from the Saleh press conferences. With the Patriots getting soundly beaten in London he stepped up to the podium and said his team was “soft”. I think the same can be said for the Jets.

Soft physically in that barely anyone seems to want to tackle. And soft mentally, because we are incapable of overcoming adversity. As soon as one thing goes wrong, the momentum shifts and it completely unravels.

If that sounds harsh then so be it. This team came into the season with Super Bowl aspirations and they’re closer to getting the #1 pick in the draft than they are the playoff places. That’s unacceptable.

Finally, is it time to admit that maybe this team is not quite as talented as we were led to believe? Under Joe Douglas we were led to believe that the strength of this franchise would be in the trenches. Yet that’s where our problems lie. The offensive line can’t run-block and the pass-blocking is spotty at best and the defensive line is a mess against the run and we only have Will McDonald who’s capable of getting to the QB.

That injury to Jermaine Johnson hurt us in the worst way. The defensive line was struggling with him, it’s a disaster without him. Will Haason Reddick help? Who knows, he should certainly help us get to the QB, but if we can’t stop the run that won’t matter all that much.

Is the season over? Technically no. We’ve still got that 17% chance of making the playoffs. But does anyone really think that we’re capable of winning 7 more games this season? 9 wins may not even get us in, but let’s say it does. Based on what we’ve seen so far can you see us winning 7 games? We have a lot of bad football teams on the schedule starting next weekend with the Patriots. But over in Foxborough they’re saying they have a lot of bad football teams on the schedule starting with the Jets.

At this point I don’t really have a lot to say.

“You are what your record says you are”