The Jets have a culture, and it is chaos. It starts with the owner who sticks his nose into things too often. Just got to have the shiny new toys: signing Revis the second time, Brett the QB, hiring Izzy as Gm, hiring coffee man as GM, deciding AR is the answer, allowing AR to bring in multiple old buddies and a fried OC who cannot be dumped because of AR (beyond ridiculous), get Williams a former WR injured star and give up on him quickly to bring in another aging WR in Adams. All these heady moves at the cost of the future as draft picks are burned.
All the GMs including Douglas do what they are told. The Jets had to go all out but they did not have enough free agent money to resolve all of the holes hence adding Williams, Smith, Moses and AR as the affordable answer.
The team has not had a viable coach since Rex, and he had only so long before his approach failed. Too many failed draft QBs.
The biggest questions for this year were if the older FA signings could hold up and could the team learn how to play cohesively and win. The answer is no. Developing a tough winning culture is hard and our hodge podge culture is soft.
Add it all together and this is a recipe for constant failure. Very bleak future. Need a new owner, need a new GM (the many new toys and the O and D lines construction are on him), need a future QB, and in this culture of losing and chaos, the young talent will want to get out of here. Other than all of this everything is great. Signing off until the Jets prove me wrong!
You were spot on in this post. I think the real issue with this group was that it wasn't built organically. They imported a handful of quick fixes the last two years and crossed their fingers that those would hold up. They were band-aids that Woody hoped would result in a playoff berth he could parlay into ticket sales and prestige.
Your key word is organically! You have a core of players who have been drafted by the Jetsies! But this year there are a lot of players added to fill the holes that the draft didn’t fill. So as a result, the team did throw or evolve together. Hence the team doesn’t have a clear culture. Also so of this can result from a poor coaching staff which doesn’t establish standards and accountability!
Can tell you are bummed and pissed like the rest of us. The whole org will be gone in January including Douglas. Flat ? He can say that but Rogers pick turned the whole game - and turned it into a blowout. This is against a team that is average at best. However one that is coached well. I had said 5-6-7 wins after SF but against who ! Would not surprise me if they lost to NE.
Just absolutely beaten down by this franchise and the constant losing. At some point you have to wonder if losing and the toxicity which comes with it is hard to shake for this franchise. Doesn't matter the GM, the players, the constant is the losing.
I David, I truly felt for you last night. The rest of us could simply turn off the tv pound another cold 🍺one and go to bed! But lucky you got to stay up and rehash this debacle until you could come up with something worth reading. Fortunately for us you did! Unfortunately there just wasn’t a lot to be excited about. I thought Davante Adams was our defensive player of the game with two tackles on those AR Interceptions and that 2nd one was high light reel worthy. 😂 He looked like he was shot out of a cannon chasing that guy down. 😂
Excellent post David. “You are what your record says you are!” You look at the roster and you think we should be “a contender” for a playoff spot. Yet the team falters on both sides of the 🏈.
Shocking that our QB feels the team had no energy and was flat. These are pros who clearly understand the meaning of this particular game. They looked okay for a quarter, perhaps a bit more. But they don’t do adversity particularly well and don’t play “tough” They don’t Make the big play when needed. Granted the secondary was battered. But good teams find a way.
The best explanation is coaching, game planning and motivating the players. This team cannot and should not be this mediocre. But when you can’t stop the run, couldn’t stop the moon pass and failed to execute on offense, you are 2-5. I also feel that this version of Rodgers is not the version of three years ago. (Obviously). Perhaps our expectations of a 41 year old coming off Achilles surgery are unreasonable. The Aaron Rodgers we see now may be the best that Aaron Rodgers is capable of being….average.
Although the statistics of making the playoffs are not encouraging, I would like to see improvement on both sides of the ball. Hopefully win a few games and put a watchable product on the field. I am skeptical that they can reel off 8 of the 10 remaining games and become a wildcard entry. It would be nice however!
Barring an 180 degree turnaround, heads will roll. As they say…. You are what your record says you are!
I got into work and talked to a fellow Jets fan coworker. And I got to think, IF we decide to restart and rebuild (AGAIN), WHO do we build around? And I was stumped.
Quinnen regressed, JJ was regressing, Sauce seems to be regressing (although not a bad player, he's just not "tough"), GW is struggling (not living up to standards at least), BH can't find a hole, MCII resigned and has been injured all year, Reed is probably going elsewhere, our OL gets tossed around, WMD is quick and savvy but also gets tossed...
The only option I can think of is Quincy and Sherwood. The only highlights of our team. Not perfect but many more pros than cons from them. Id throw in Big 0.
Our team is built around speed but we have no strength. Physically you look at Steelers, Bills, Ravens, 49ers, and Chiefs and those players are big and quick. All love to HIT or run through people on O. Our guys are lean and quick. I'd say DJ and MCII are good hitters and the two LBs but that's about it, and the former two are small. Everyone else bounces off of players. "On paper" we have talent and can technically compete. But pin is against some of these tough teams, and see how often we bounce off of RBs or how tough players take out our smaller O guys.
We have a core personnel problem. If I'm the coach, I'd put in Corley and Allen and Olu more and test out some hard hitting players and see if they are worth building around. Because two more losses over the next 10 games and we're officially done. Currently the fanbase has ruled us out all together. And it's seeming like the players ruled themselves out already as well.
I really agree with your last paragraph, but Ulbrich is not going to do that. If he was the HC and was in his first year, he might go with the youngsters to see what they had and try to develop them, but Ulbrich is going to try to win games so he can keep his job with the Jets or get another DC job. If the Jets lose out, which looks entirely possible at this point, Ulbrich might do well get a LB position coaching job.
Time to focus on the positive. Got off to a great start and Devante looks fully healthy, and so does Aaron. And for the most part seems accurate. Secondary is the deepest part of the team. I hate to say it but ran into a buzzsaw in Pittsburgh that made zero mistakes. Only 4 penalties and no turnovers. And won every contested catch. Those picks by Beanie were great and very unlucky plays. You would think the lucks swings toward Jets at some point. Stranger things have happened.
I really agree with David on metal toughness. They did fall apart after Aaron’s first pick. Lost all their steam.
Final point, why are Jets getting the best football out of every team they play? Denver played great football, Buffalo played their best game, Pittsburgh was awesome. San Fran incredible. Vikings were a machine. Opposing coaches all look like Vince Lombardi against them. Maybe it’s just the Jets, but opposing teams seem to play their best games against them.
Btw, the biggest positive is the schedule going forward. Take a look!
Douglas, you are spot on here. The wife and I watching the game and she says to me; why is it that when we run the ball our RB’s are having so much trouble getting back to the line of scrimmage? And the opponents RB’s run unmolested for 5 or more yards on every run? OK, I think we all know the answers to those two questions but over the last two games we can’t even get a FG off without it being blocked! We got lucky on our first attempt when the officials ruled the Steeler defender illegally used a teammate for leverage. But we then got a FG blocked and really our special teams looked anything but special. I don’t know what to say about our so called top 5, or top 10 defense? At this point it looks more like maybe top 30? Sauce Gardner continues to grab and hold he’s not getting the benefit of the doubt these days. Tyler Conklin offers nothing as a receiver as he’s slower than Morgan Moses. And the tackling? Actually I thought our best tackler last night was Davante Adams who sprinted about 60 yards and caught the Steeler from behind after the Garrett Wilson drop turned into an interception.
It seemed like AR looked like Zach Wilson on some of his short passes with his placement. And that interception at the end of the first half was horrible to put it mildly. What happened to JBC and Stiggers? Another game that after the first quarter was hard on the eyes. Pittsburgh looked like a much more dominating team. AVT out again. Is this another season ending injury? Breece looked really good , however outside of a few plays, the offensive line was again terrible. I think there has to be a connecting the dots here to Carter.
My all time favorite movie is “A Bronx Tale”. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend that you do, if you have seen it, you know that one saying is mentioned countless times in the movie. That saying is “ Wasted or wasting Talent. That can definitely be the description of this present Jet team
In a season, that started with three games in ten days, the Jets rose to the occasion to win 2 out of 3.
The fan base was exhilarated, the media wrote in positives. Coming up was the softest part of their schedule, 4 winnable games.
In true Jet fashion, they lost all 4.
This is slowly turning into one of the worst seasons in Jet history.
I sometimes post tongue in cheek or joke around. But today the only joke is this team and what they put their fan base through.
I’ve have actually run out of words or I don’t know what to say.
But in all actualities, at this point, I could care less about them.
A very understated story for this game that had the Steeler base and media upset was Tomlin’s decision to bench 4-2 Justin Fields for Russell Wilson. Tomlin was taking his lumps all week, by the end of the game last night, he was a genius.
Tomlin has been the Steeler coach since 2007.
In fact the Steelers since 1969 have had only 3 head coaches
Chuck Noll from 1969 to 1991
Bill Cowher from 1992 to 2006
and Tomlin from 2007 to present. That is three HCs in 54 years, the Jets have had 2 in the last 3 weeks.
Maybe we are on to something here, could Woody Johnson be constantly hiring the wrong people to run this team or are the Steelers a greatly run organization or a lucky one.
Without boring you with the HC rogue list, Since the team’s inception as the Titans in 1960, the Jets have had 21 HCs, 19 since Noll was hired in 1969, and 6 since Tomlin was hired.
One person on tweeter last night posted that the Jets needed to bring in an established coach.
They tried with Parcells but for whatever reasons he bailed because of stipulations in his
contract with Leon Hess or maybe he spent 10 minutes in a room with Woody and said adios, the same with the hated Belichick, he said in later years, he bailed because of Woody.
The Chiefs after winning Super Bowl 4 were an exact copy of the Jets, countless HC’s, bringing in aged quarterbacks like Montana, nothing worked .
Then they basically kidnapped Andy Reid in an airport on his way to interview for either the Falcons or Panthers, you know the rest of the story.
Is there an established HC out there, I know everyone in unison will say Vrabel, he maybe the answer or he might not be, but is there someone else, I don’t have that answer.
One other saying constantly said in A Bronx Tale is “ nobody cares, nobody cares.
So I think maybe we give Davante Adams our defensive player of the game award🤔 His tackle on that GW target that went bad was clearly our best tackle. 😂
Yes, it's shocking just how absymally poor the Jets are at blocking and tackling. They have zero mental toughness. They have too many "finesse" type players who just aren't strong, mean, and tough enough. Maybe it's time to abandon the high character types and hire a team full of violent felons. The team isn't smart, either. If they can't get motivated to bring the fire and energy with the season on the line, then they don't deserve to call themselves professionals. I've got more fire and energy and refusal to quit at 70 than that bunch of pansies do.
LOL If you're referring to Clemons, he a pussy masquerading as a tough guy. Take away his physique and his Neagin bat, and he's got nothing. He's simply not very good, isn't fast enough and doesn't work hard enough.
I think the designation of a guy being "tough" is a little hard to pin down. What exaclty makes somebody tough? What sorts of guys in the building do you see as being "finesse?" I can understand the exasperation regarding the team's inability to eke out these wins. It's probably a combination of poor leadership across a few different levels: coaching, leadership on the actual offensive coaching staff, coordination between the front office types and the coaching staff and coordination between different parts of the coaching staff. This kind of stuff can start to happen when original plans fail. Folks up top try to plug holes by fiat without due diligence to how those holes impact the rest of the whole. It's just a poorly constructed team (players, coaches, support staff) that doesn't gel well together. They'll tear things down in the offseason and try again. Hopefully they do a little bit better. I don't, however, think there is much to the idea that they're focusing too much on high character or that high character players are any more or less tough than other guys. It's fugazi.
Your question about Woody hiring the wrong people or the Steelers getting lucky...it's both. What's more, the luck accentuates the good hires and the good hires feed off of the luck.
Soft. Yep, that describes the Jets right now. We're too soft on catching, tackling, blocking, and coaching. We're mentally soft too. I appreciate GW for owning up to mistakes but he's not playing like a top receiver. People are calling for his benching (odd but that's the NY fanbase). Two false starts is not it. He's visibly flustered.
As an optimistic person, I'm struggling to see how we beat NE. They have a top CB, good enough DL, and a QB that's progressing positively. We are trending in the exact opposite direction on all fronts. Is it possible to win? Of course. But expectations are real low.
Nice column David, especially with you having to go back over everything after watching that debacle. If AR had anything at all left when he came to the Jets, it got lost when he had the Achilles. And this year, all of the new pieces brought in haven't produced as expected. Smith seems to have fallen off a cliff, talent-wise. Speed rushers are just killing him, his lateral movement is just gone. Moses has just been passable, and Simpson is a disappointment. And AVT got manhandled the entire game until he went out with what they say is an ankle injury. With the o-line not performing, AR is getting pounded in every game and there's no way he can shake that off. And no matter what he says, the pressure is getting to him and he can't respond like he used to. He has reached the end of the road, it's so plain to see.
On the interceptions, I think this is the second or third time this season that a ball has bounced off Garrett and been picked off. The first one I am ambivalent about, because I went back to it and slo-mo'ed a couple of times and it seemed to me that Beanie Baby was totally fooled by GW's move and got spun around and was completely out of position. He made a great/lucky play on the ball with one hand. And I'm not making excuses for AR, I was against the entire deal from the beginning, knowing it would become a debacle. He's done plenty that deserves blame. As some others have commented, this is the worst situation I've seen the Jets in in a long time. It is truly a debacle of historic proportions.
I think they need to start Olu at LT, Smith has degraded more with each game. I don't know what's going on with AVT, but he just seems to be injury-prone. And he got manhandled last night. The run defense is just awful once again. Fotu is a nonentity and a useless signing. Kinlaw hasn't fulfilled the promise that was hoped for. But above all, for me, the scheme is the biggest issue. Second is the total reliance on faster, lighter LB's who can't provide punch at the point of attack. It's getting tiring watching an RB get hit straight up by CJ or Q2, but still pushes forward for extra yards. Sherwood is a bit better and ready for a starting position going forward.
And naturally, the injury bug has hit. MCII, Reed, Clark are hurt and now Tony Adams was grabbing his hammy and came out. I don't know what the report will say. And just more shoddy tackling, which has been an issue for at least 5 years now. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that they go into Foxboro and get beaten up. And at 2-6, with another primetime game against Houston, things do not look good.
I don’t think we have a player problem this year, the skill is there. Next year we will have too many holes to fill with all the players on 1 year deals. If you look at the year over year good nfl teams they have one thing in common good coaches. KC loses star players to FA but they keep winning, lots of injuries but they still find ways to win. SF struggling a bit this year due to injuries but are still competing, Lions Dan Campbell turned the team around with Goff at QB. I’m not blaming Brich he is doing what
To show that I’m not a Debbie Downer about the Jet organization.
They were 100% right about drafting Will McDonald, he is presently the only Jet pass rusher doing his job and quite well, to bad he doesn’t get help from his teammates, he might have 12-13 sacks by now.
He's been fun to watch, even if he occasionally looks like Bambi. The kid needs to put on another 20 lbs. He is full of energy. It'd be awesome if you could inject some of that hand violence and chaos into Micheal Clemons.
He was supposed to bulk up over the off season, and he came back at 237 and said he was stronger. But sometimes strength doesn't help when you are giving up 100 pounds in weight to a relatively fast and quick o-lineman. He needs to go up to at least 245-250 to be more than just a situational pass-rusher, and maybe not even then. He's having a great year, but he's going to wear down, it's inevitable.
As far as Clemons goes, he's never going to be quick enough, it is what it is. That's the way he is built, and he cannot control himself anger-wise, that's a major problem.
After the game, Ulbrich said that AR played well. Was he watching the same game that we were?Moses, Smith and Smith were not re-signed by their teams. From what I know, Baltimore and Dallas are pretty smart and well run franchises. Did they know something that JD and his crew didn't know?
Spot on, David. This team sucks. They have no heart, no desire. That's both on them and the CS, but it's also on Woody and JD. It all starts at the top, and as they say, shit runs downhill. This team isn't winning jack as long as Woody owns the team. I've finally accepted that. Don't re-sign JD, re-sign JD, it makes no difference. If not JD, Woody will just hire some other stiff who probably won't even be as good as JD, and he'll hire some schlub as HC that no other team would seriously consider for HC. It'll be wash, rinse, and repeat. It's an endless cycle, like groundhog day or as Bobber said, like Sisyphus pushing that boulder up the hill in Hades.
Let's all face it. For whatever reason we became Jets fans, we're all suckers. That said, tose of us who are older had no clue that when we finally got rid of old man Hess, someone equally inept would buy the team. For those who are younger, they had no idea that Woody and Christ would be such losers. Regardless, here we are, or at least, were in my case as this is it. I'm done with this joke of a team and franchise. I'm truly starting to think that it is cursed when Wilson, Adams, and Rodgers start making mistakes, dropping passes, forcing throws, etc. There's just something about this team that turns good players to shit. T. Smith, a sure-fire HOFer, plays like absolute dog shit. M. Moses a solid, respected veteran, plays like crap. Breece can catch, but he can't do anything on the ground.
I've enjoyed chatting with all of you, but this is possibly my last post, and I won't be renewing my subscription. I'm just tired of reading and discussing the same old BS from the Jets. We have different names and faces, but the results are always the same, disappointment, frustration, and heartache. I refuse to stay and be one of those bitter, cynical fans who just loves to criticize everything about the team. Life's just too short for this crap.
I don't have a ton of positives about this one. I largely second screened this sucker. I, mostly, followed the vibes and didn't get too involved in the game and, honestly, I'm okay with it. I don't like watching Aaron Rodgers (I've been pretty explicit about not enjoying rooting for him) and, it's probably bias, but I feel like he injects this team with a bad vibe. If they win, it's "they were supposed to win" and "why wasn't it better?" If they lose, it's "what the hell?!" and "this team is trash!" It's, just, not a fun experience and it goes back to Rodgers. He, by way of his past performances and the residual effects of his accolades, raises expectations to unrealistic expectations. The team was hastily thrown together last year with Rodgers as the centerpiece and everything was supposed to be amazing. The "character" of the team was supposed to have changed and Rodgers was allegedly bringing "winning culture" into the locker room. I suppose I never bought that, considering Rodgers today isn't the Rodgers from a few years ago. His quirks and shenanigans work on well run organizations with deeply entrenched winning ways. Drop Aaron Rodgers on the Ravens, Steelers, Chiefs, or Niners and they probably compete for Super Bowls immediately. Heck; drop him onto the Vikings, Browns, or Dolphins (teams with well regarded offensive dudes who know how to work with any Q that you drop in their lap) and they compete for playoff spots.
Is it possible that Rodgers, simply, is not a culture changer? Is it possible that he is, actually, kryptonite to a locker room? The Jets are normally a team with all of their business out in the open. I can understand how going with Rodgers, who is the ultimate "put everything out in the open" Q, makes some kind of wacky sense. I think that puts pressure on the rest of the team, however. If he is going to be so aggressively open with the press about everything he does, perhaps some of his schtick should be taking bullets on behalf of his teammates. This roster feels exposed and unable to organically develop. They're under the worst kind of spotlight 24/7, and the combination of Rodgers and NYC exacerbates it.
The guys on the team are plenty talented. If you follow the NFL, you see pretty often that the difference in talent level between most players isn't particularly large. Every player in the league is able to play. What differentiates a team from the next is the front office assembling a team, in tandem with the coaching staff, that fits the style the team wants to play, as well as allowing that team's personality to develop. This team feels kind of toxic, and the hired guns doesn't make it any less so. The offensive line is plenty talented, but don't seem to be a cohesive unit. At this point, I'd chalk that up to poor performance on Carter's part, with a nice helping of blame on Hackett and the crappy staff infrastructure that he established. The rest of this team is plenty talented when compared to the rest of the league (with the exception of the safeties group at the moment....they're reeling from these injuries). I'm still excited to see development and watch games because football is fun to watch. I haven't been heavily rooting FOR them (or at least the offense) because of Rodgers, though. I'll be happy when he's gone.
So the play where Newman got hurt and the play where AVT got hurt were both avoidable and due to self-inflicted mistakes. Same with players in the last two years. Rinse and repeat every year as a Jets fan.
I sure know the feeling of Tyron on that play. The difference is that he has been playing in the league for over a decade at an insanely high level. I wonder how many of those caliber of plays he has every year. Also grading out poorly on that play is our old buddy Jeremy Ruckert. I'm not certain why he was working in the opposite direction towards the backside defensive end instead of working a combo with Smith. Him working in Smith's pocket LOOKS like it should be what happened. That would've saved Smith on this play. I can't be sure, though.
Yea it's almost as if the run coordinator didn't train these guys what to do. Ruckert was torn between going to second level, helping inside, and helping outside. That, or Ruckert is just absolutely terrible and the coaches continue to stick with him as he consistently lets the team down on big plays... There HAS to be a big guy on any practice squad that can block better than that...
He can with what he has to work with plus only been a couple weeks. It shocks me that AR said the team was flat WTF, how can that be? Woody gets a lot of heat on here but he at least has tried to energize the team, he brought in a HF QB because all we needed to win was a top 15 QB, he now brought in Adams because we needed one more weapon, he spoke out on the Reddick issue to encourage that deal to get done. I bet there are many coaches out there that would love to have the players this team has and could win with this group.
The Jets have a culture, and it is chaos. It starts with the owner who sticks his nose into things too often. Just got to have the shiny new toys: signing Revis the second time, Brett the QB, hiring Izzy as Gm, hiring coffee man as GM, deciding AR is the answer, allowing AR to bring in multiple old buddies and a fried OC who cannot be dumped because of AR (beyond ridiculous), get Williams a former WR injured star and give up on him quickly to bring in another aging WR in Adams. All these heady moves at the cost of the future as draft picks are burned.
All the GMs including Douglas do what they are told. The Jets had to go all out but they did not have enough free agent money to resolve all of the holes hence adding Williams, Smith, Moses and AR as the affordable answer.
The team has not had a viable coach since Rex, and he had only so long before his approach failed. Too many failed draft QBs.
The biggest questions for this year were if the older FA signings could hold up and could the team learn how to play cohesively and win. The answer is no. Developing a tough winning culture is hard and our hodge podge culture is soft.
Add it all together and this is a recipe for constant failure. Very bleak future. Need a new owner, need a new GM (the many new toys and the O and D lines construction are on him), need a future QB, and in this culture of losing and chaos, the young talent will want to get out of here. Other than all of this everything is great. Signing off until the Jets prove me wrong!
You were spot on in this post. I think the real issue with this group was that it wasn't built organically. They imported a handful of quick fixes the last two years and crossed their fingers that those would hold up. They were band-aids that Woody hoped would result in a playoff berth he could parlay into ticket sales and prestige.
Your key word is organically! You have a core of players who have been drafted by the Jetsies! But this year there are a lot of players added to fill the holes that the draft didn’t fill. So as a result, the team did throw or evolve together. Hence the team doesn’t have a clear culture. Also so of this can result from a poor coaching staff which doesn’t establish standards and accountability!
Can tell you are bummed and pissed like the rest of us. The whole org will be gone in January including Douglas. Flat ? He can say that but Rogers pick turned the whole game - and turned it into a blowout. This is against a team that is average at best. However one that is coached well. I had said 5-6-7 wins after SF but against who ! Would not surprise me if they lost to NE.
Just absolutely beaten down by this franchise and the constant losing. At some point you have to wonder if losing and the toxicity which comes with it is hard to shake for this franchise. Doesn't matter the GM, the players, the constant is the losing.
I David, I truly felt for you last night. The rest of us could simply turn off the tv pound another cold 🍺one and go to bed! But lucky you got to stay up and rehash this debacle until you could come up with something worth reading. Fortunately for us you did! Unfortunately there just wasn’t a lot to be excited about. I thought Davante Adams was our defensive player of the game with two tackles on those AR Interceptions and that 2nd one was high light reel worthy. 😂 He looked like he was shot out of a cannon chasing that guy down. 😂
Excellent post David. “You are what your record says you are!” You look at the roster and you think we should be “a contender” for a playoff spot. Yet the team falters on both sides of the 🏈.
Shocking that our QB feels the team had no energy and was flat. These are pros who clearly understand the meaning of this particular game. They looked okay for a quarter, perhaps a bit more. But they don’t do adversity particularly well and don’t play “tough” They don’t Make the big play when needed. Granted the secondary was battered. But good teams find a way.
The best explanation is coaching, game planning and motivating the players. This team cannot and should not be this mediocre. But when you can’t stop the run, couldn’t stop the moon pass and failed to execute on offense, you are 2-5. I also feel that this version of Rodgers is not the version of three years ago. (Obviously). Perhaps our expectations of a 41 year old coming off Achilles surgery are unreasonable. The Aaron Rodgers we see now may be the best that Aaron Rodgers is capable of being….average.
Although the statistics of making the playoffs are not encouraging, I would like to see improvement on both sides of the ball. Hopefully win a few games and put a watchable product on the field. I am skeptical that they can reel off 8 of the 10 remaining games and become a wildcard entry. It would be nice however!
Barring an 180 degree turnaround, heads will roll. As they say…. You are what your record says you are!
I got into work and talked to a fellow Jets fan coworker. And I got to think, IF we decide to restart and rebuild (AGAIN), WHO do we build around? And I was stumped.
Quinnen regressed, JJ was regressing, Sauce seems to be regressing (although not a bad player, he's just not "tough"), GW is struggling (not living up to standards at least), BH can't find a hole, MCII resigned and has been injured all year, Reed is probably going elsewhere, our OL gets tossed around, WMD is quick and savvy but also gets tossed...
The only option I can think of is Quincy and Sherwood. The only highlights of our team. Not perfect but many more pros than cons from them. Id throw in Big 0.
Our team is built around speed but we have no strength. Physically you look at Steelers, Bills, Ravens, 49ers, and Chiefs and those players are big and quick. All love to HIT or run through people on O. Our guys are lean and quick. I'd say DJ and MCII are good hitters and the two LBs but that's about it, and the former two are small. Everyone else bounces off of players. "On paper" we have talent and can technically compete. But pin is against some of these tough teams, and see how often we bounce off of RBs or how tough players take out our smaller O guys.
We have a core personnel problem. If I'm the coach, I'd put in Corley and Allen and Olu more and test out some hard hitting players and see if they are worth building around. Because two more losses over the next 10 games and we're officially done. Currently the fanbase has ruled us out all together. And it's seeming like the players ruled themselves out already as well.
I really agree with your last paragraph, but Ulbrich is not going to do that. If he was the HC and was in his first year, he might go with the youngsters to see what they had and try to develop them, but Ulbrich is going to try to win games so he can keep his job with the Jets or get another DC job. If the Jets lose out, which looks entirely possible at this point, Ulbrich might do well get a LB position coaching job.
Time to focus on the positive. Got off to a great start and Devante looks fully healthy, and so does Aaron. And for the most part seems accurate. Secondary is the deepest part of the team. I hate to say it but ran into a buzzsaw in Pittsburgh that made zero mistakes. Only 4 penalties and no turnovers. And won every contested catch. Those picks by Beanie were great and very unlucky plays. You would think the lucks swings toward Jets at some point. Stranger things have happened.
I really agree with David on metal toughness. They did fall apart after Aaron’s first pick. Lost all their steam.
Final point, why are Jets getting the best football out of every team they play? Denver played great football, Buffalo played their best game, Pittsburgh was awesome. San Fran incredible. Vikings were a machine. Opposing coaches all look like Vince Lombardi against them. Maybe it’s just the Jets, but opposing teams seem to play their best games against them.
Btw, the biggest positive is the schedule going forward. Take a look!
Douglas, you are spot on here. The wife and I watching the game and she says to me; why is it that when we run the ball our RB’s are having so much trouble getting back to the line of scrimmage? And the opponents RB’s run unmolested for 5 or more yards on every run? OK, I think we all know the answers to those two questions but over the last two games we can’t even get a FG off without it being blocked! We got lucky on our first attempt when the officials ruled the Steeler defender illegally used a teammate for leverage. But we then got a FG blocked and really our special teams looked anything but special. I don’t know what to say about our so called top 5, or top 10 defense? At this point it looks more like maybe top 30? Sauce Gardner continues to grab and hold he’s not getting the benefit of the doubt these days. Tyler Conklin offers nothing as a receiver as he’s slower than Morgan Moses. And the tackling? Actually I thought our best tackler last night was Davante Adams who sprinted about 60 yards and caught the Steeler from behind after the Garrett Wilson drop turned into an interception.
It seemed like AR looked like Zach Wilson on some of his short passes with his placement. And that interception at the end of the first half was horrible to put it mildly. What happened to JBC and Stiggers? Another game that after the first quarter was hard on the eyes. Pittsburgh looked like a much more dominating team. AVT out again. Is this another season ending injury? Breece looked really good , however outside of a few plays, the offensive line was again terrible. I think there has to be a connecting the dots here to Carter.
My all time favorite movie is “A Bronx Tale”. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend that you do, if you have seen it, you know that one saying is mentioned countless times in the movie. That saying is “ Wasted or wasting Talent. That can definitely be the description of this present Jet team
In a season, that started with three games in ten days, the Jets rose to the occasion to win 2 out of 3.
The fan base was exhilarated, the media wrote in positives. Coming up was the softest part of their schedule, 4 winnable games.
In true Jet fashion, they lost all 4.
This is slowly turning into one of the worst seasons in Jet history.
I sometimes post tongue in cheek or joke around. But today the only joke is this team and what they put their fan base through.
I’ve have actually run out of words or I don’t know what to say.
But in all actualities, at this point, I could care less about them.
A very understated story for this game that had the Steeler base and media upset was Tomlin’s decision to bench 4-2 Justin Fields for Russell Wilson. Tomlin was taking his lumps all week, by the end of the game last night, he was a genius.
Tomlin has been the Steeler coach since 2007.
In fact the Steelers since 1969 have had only 3 head coaches
Chuck Noll from 1969 to 1991
Bill Cowher from 1992 to 2006
and Tomlin from 2007 to present. That is three HCs in 54 years, the Jets have had 2 in the last 3 weeks.
Maybe we are on to something here, could Woody Johnson be constantly hiring the wrong people to run this team or are the Steelers a greatly run organization or a lucky one.
Without boring you with the HC rogue list, Since the team’s inception as the Titans in 1960, the Jets have had 21 HCs, 19 since Noll was hired in 1969, and 6 since Tomlin was hired.
One person on tweeter last night posted that the Jets needed to bring in an established coach.
They tried with Parcells but for whatever reasons he bailed because of stipulations in his
contract with Leon Hess or maybe he spent 10 minutes in a room with Woody and said adios, the same with the hated Belichick, he said in later years, he bailed because of Woody.
The Chiefs after winning Super Bowl 4 were an exact copy of the Jets, countless HC’s, bringing in aged quarterbacks like Montana, nothing worked .
Then they basically kidnapped Andy Reid in an airport on his way to interview for either the Falcons or Panthers, you know the rest of the story.
Is there an established HC out there, I know everyone in unison will say Vrabel, he maybe the answer or he might not be, but is there someone else, I don’t have that answer.
One other saying constantly said in A Bronx Tale is “ nobody cares, nobody cares.
As far as the Jets go today, I really don’t care.
Good post Bobber. After watching the last few games how can anyone care!
So I think maybe we give Davante Adams our defensive player of the game award🤔 His tackle on that GW target that went bad was clearly our best tackle. 😂
Yes, it's shocking just how absymally poor the Jets are at blocking and tackling. They have zero mental toughness. They have too many "finesse" type players who just aren't strong, mean, and tough enough. Maybe it's time to abandon the high character types and hire a team full of violent felons. The team isn't smart, either. If they can't get motivated to bring the fire and energy with the season on the line, then they don't deserve to call themselves professionals. I've got more fire and energy and refusal to quit at 70 than that bunch of pansies do.
Well we go have a violent felon type but he stinks😂
LOL If you're referring to Clemons, he a pussy masquerading as a tough guy. Take away his physique and his Neagin bat, and he's got nothing. He's simply not very good, isn't fast enough and doesn't work hard enough.
Where do you get the idea that he doesn't work hard?
I think the designation of a guy being "tough" is a little hard to pin down. What exaclty makes somebody tough? What sorts of guys in the building do you see as being "finesse?" I can understand the exasperation regarding the team's inability to eke out these wins. It's probably a combination of poor leadership across a few different levels: coaching, leadership on the actual offensive coaching staff, coordination between the front office types and the coaching staff and coordination between different parts of the coaching staff. This kind of stuff can start to happen when original plans fail. Folks up top try to plug holes by fiat without due diligence to how those holes impact the rest of the whole. It's just a poorly constructed team (players, coaches, support staff) that doesn't gel well together. They'll tear things down in the offseason and try again. Hopefully they do a little bit better. I don't, however, think there is much to the idea that they're focusing too much on high character or that high character players are any more or less tough than other guys. It's fugazi.
Your question about Woody hiring the wrong people or the Steelers getting lucky...it's both. What's more, the luck accentuates the good hires and the good hires feed off of the luck.
Soft. Yep, that describes the Jets right now. We're too soft on catching, tackling, blocking, and coaching. We're mentally soft too. I appreciate GW for owning up to mistakes but he's not playing like a top receiver. People are calling for his benching (odd but that's the NY fanbase). Two false starts is not it. He's visibly flustered.
As an optimistic person, I'm struggling to see how we beat NE. They have a top CB, good enough DL, and a QB that's progressing positively. We are trending in the exact opposite direction on all fronts. Is it possible to win? Of course. But expectations are real low.
Nice column David, especially with you having to go back over everything after watching that debacle. If AR had anything at all left when he came to the Jets, it got lost when he had the Achilles. And this year, all of the new pieces brought in haven't produced as expected. Smith seems to have fallen off a cliff, talent-wise. Speed rushers are just killing him, his lateral movement is just gone. Moses has just been passable, and Simpson is a disappointment. And AVT got manhandled the entire game until he went out with what they say is an ankle injury. With the o-line not performing, AR is getting pounded in every game and there's no way he can shake that off. And no matter what he says, the pressure is getting to him and he can't respond like he used to. He has reached the end of the road, it's so plain to see.
On the interceptions, I think this is the second or third time this season that a ball has bounced off Garrett and been picked off. The first one I am ambivalent about, because I went back to it and slo-mo'ed a couple of times and it seemed to me that Beanie Baby was totally fooled by GW's move and got spun around and was completely out of position. He made a great/lucky play on the ball with one hand. And I'm not making excuses for AR, I was against the entire deal from the beginning, knowing it would become a debacle. He's done plenty that deserves blame. As some others have commented, this is the worst situation I've seen the Jets in in a long time. It is truly a debacle of historic proportions.
I think they need to start Olu at LT, Smith has degraded more with each game. I don't know what's going on with AVT, but he just seems to be injury-prone. And he got manhandled last night. The run defense is just awful once again. Fotu is a nonentity and a useless signing. Kinlaw hasn't fulfilled the promise that was hoped for. But above all, for me, the scheme is the biggest issue. Second is the total reliance on faster, lighter LB's who can't provide punch at the point of attack. It's getting tiring watching an RB get hit straight up by CJ or Q2, but still pushes forward for extra yards. Sherwood is a bit better and ready for a starting position going forward.
And naturally, the injury bug has hit. MCII, Reed, Clark are hurt and now Tony Adams was grabbing his hammy and came out. I don't know what the report will say. And just more shoddy tackling, which has been an issue for at least 5 years now. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that they go into Foxboro and get beaten up. And at 2-6, with another primetime game against Houston, things do not look good.
I don’t think we have a player problem this year, the skill is there. Next year we will have too many holes to fill with all the players on 1 year deals. If you look at the year over year good nfl teams they have one thing in common good coaches. KC loses star players to FA but they keep winning, lots of injuries but they still find ways to win. SF struggling a bit this year due to injuries but are still competing, Lions Dan Campbell turned the team around with Goff at QB. I’m not blaming Brich he is doing what
To show that I’m not a Debbie Downer about the Jet organization.
They were 100% right about drafting Will McDonald, he is presently the only Jet pass rusher doing his job and quite well, to bad he doesn’t get help from his teammates, he might have 12-13 sacks by now.
He's been fun to watch, even if he occasionally looks like Bambi. The kid needs to put on another 20 lbs. He is full of energy. It'd be awesome if you could inject some of that hand violence and chaos into Micheal Clemons.
He was supposed to bulk up over the off season, and he came back at 237 and said he was stronger. But sometimes strength doesn't help when you are giving up 100 pounds in weight to a relatively fast and quick o-lineman. He needs to go up to at least 245-250 to be more than just a situational pass-rusher, and maybe not even then. He's having a great year, but he's going to wear down, it's inevitable.
As far as Clemons goes, he's never going to be quick enough, it is what it is. That's the way he is built, and he cannot control himself anger-wise, that's a major problem.
After the game, Ulbrich said that AR played well. Was he watching the same game that we were?Moses, Smith and Smith were not re-signed by their teams. From what I know, Baltimore and Dallas are pretty smart and well run franchises. Did they know something that JD and his crew didn't know?
The Ravens; Absolutely! The Cowboys 🤔 They are every bit the clowns we are!
You're right Ron. It was a shitshow of biblical proportions.
Spot on, David. This team sucks. They have no heart, no desire. That's both on them and the CS, but it's also on Woody and JD. It all starts at the top, and as they say, shit runs downhill. This team isn't winning jack as long as Woody owns the team. I've finally accepted that. Don't re-sign JD, re-sign JD, it makes no difference. If not JD, Woody will just hire some other stiff who probably won't even be as good as JD, and he'll hire some schlub as HC that no other team would seriously consider for HC. It'll be wash, rinse, and repeat. It's an endless cycle, like groundhog day or as Bobber said, like Sisyphus pushing that boulder up the hill in Hades.
Let's all face it. For whatever reason we became Jets fans, we're all suckers. That said, tose of us who are older had no clue that when we finally got rid of old man Hess, someone equally inept would buy the team. For those who are younger, they had no idea that Woody and Christ would be such losers. Regardless, here we are, or at least, were in my case as this is it. I'm done with this joke of a team and franchise. I'm truly starting to think that it is cursed when Wilson, Adams, and Rodgers start making mistakes, dropping passes, forcing throws, etc. There's just something about this team that turns good players to shit. T. Smith, a sure-fire HOFer, plays like absolute dog shit. M. Moses a solid, respected veteran, plays like crap. Breece can catch, but he can't do anything on the ground.
I've enjoyed chatting with all of you, but this is possibly my last post, and I won't be renewing my subscription. I'm just tired of reading and discussing the same old BS from the Jets. We have different names and faces, but the results are always the same, disappointment, frustration, and heartache. I refuse to stay and be one of those bitter, cynical fans who just loves to criticize everything about the team. Life's just too short for this crap.
Everyone take care and may God Bless!
Best of luck. Agree with your sentiments on this
Mornin' y'all!
I don't have a ton of positives about this one. I largely second screened this sucker. I, mostly, followed the vibes and didn't get too involved in the game and, honestly, I'm okay with it. I don't like watching Aaron Rodgers (I've been pretty explicit about not enjoying rooting for him) and, it's probably bias, but I feel like he injects this team with a bad vibe. If they win, it's "they were supposed to win" and "why wasn't it better?" If they lose, it's "what the hell?!" and "this team is trash!" It's, just, not a fun experience and it goes back to Rodgers. He, by way of his past performances and the residual effects of his accolades, raises expectations to unrealistic expectations. The team was hastily thrown together last year with Rodgers as the centerpiece and everything was supposed to be amazing. The "character" of the team was supposed to have changed and Rodgers was allegedly bringing "winning culture" into the locker room. I suppose I never bought that, considering Rodgers today isn't the Rodgers from a few years ago. His quirks and shenanigans work on well run organizations with deeply entrenched winning ways. Drop Aaron Rodgers on the Ravens, Steelers, Chiefs, or Niners and they probably compete for Super Bowls immediately. Heck; drop him onto the Vikings, Browns, or Dolphins (teams with well regarded offensive dudes who know how to work with any Q that you drop in their lap) and they compete for playoff spots.
Is it possible that Rodgers, simply, is not a culture changer? Is it possible that he is, actually, kryptonite to a locker room? The Jets are normally a team with all of their business out in the open. I can understand how going with Rodgers, who is the ultimate "put everything out in the open" Q, makes some kind of wacky sense. I think that puts pressure on the rest of the team, however. If he is going to be so aggressively open with the press about everything he does, perhaps some of his schtick should be taking bullets on behalf of his teammates. This roster feels exposed and unable to organically develop. They're under the worst kind of spotlight 24/7, and the combination of Rodgers and NYC exacerbates it.
The guys on the team are plenty talented. If you follow the NFL, you see pretty often that the difference in talent level between most players isn't particularly large. Every player in the league is able to play. What differentiates a team from the next is the front office assembling a team, in tandem with the coaching staff, that fits the style the team wants to play, as well as allowing that team's personality to develop. This team feels kind of toxic, and the hired guns doesn't make it any less so. The offensive line is plenty talented, but don't seem to be a cohesive unit. At this point, I'd chalk that up to poor performance on Carter's part, with a nice helping of blame on Hackett and the crappy staff infrastructure that he established. The rest of this team is plenty talented when compared to the rest of the league (with the exception of the safeties group at the moment....they're reeling from these injuries). I'm still excited to see development and watch games because football is fun to watch. I haven't been heavily rooting FOR them (or at least the offense) because of Rodgers, though. I'll be happy when he's gone.
https://x.com/afialkow21/status/1848370952712737101
So the play where Newman got hurt and the play where AVT got hurt were both avoidable and due to self-inflicted mistakes. Same with players in the last two years. Rinse and repeat every year as a Jets fan.
I sure know the feeling of Tyron on that play. The difference is that he has been playing in the league for over a decade at an insanely high level. I wonder how many of those caliber of plays he has every year. Also grading out poorly on that play is our old buddy Jeremy Ruckert. I'm not certain why he was working in the opposite direction towards the backside defensive end instead of working a combo with Smith. Him working in Smith's pocket LOOKS like it should be what happened. That would've saved Smith on this play. I can't be sure, though.
Yea it's almost as if the run coordinator didn't train these guys what to do. Ruckert was torn between going to second level, helping inside, and helping outside. That, or Ruckert is just absolutely terrible and the coaches continue to stick with him as he consistently lets the team down on big plays... There HAS to be a big guy on any practice squad that can block better than that...
He can with what he has to work with plus only been a couple weeks. It shocks me that AR said the team was flat WTF, how can that be? Woody gets a lot of heat on here but he at least has tried to energize the team, he brought in a HF QB because all we needed to win was a top 15 QB, he now brought in Adams because we needed one more weapon, he spoke out on the Reddick issue to encourage that deal to get done. I bet there are many coaches out there that would love to have the players this team has and could win with this group.