Inept & On The Verge

Edition #533

Good morning!

Last night I joked with Steve that I was going to turn this into a New York Rangers newsletter for the foreseeable future, but with respect to our many Islanders and Devils fans, I’ll hold off. But there was more offence in the Rangers 6-5 win over San Jose last night than we’ve seen with the Jets all season.

If you need a distraction, Mets Fix will have all the latest news from the winter meetings. I’ve got my tickets for the Mets game in London next year, and I’ll be praying that Senga is pitching that day. I first saw Senga when I was on honeymoon in Japan and he was pitching for the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks. If baseball is not your thing then there is Isles Fix for all your Islander fans or Knicks Film School for you Knicks fans. I’ve been an awful Knicks fan this year only catching one game, but KFS always keeps me up to date.

Here are a few nuggets of information courtest of ESPN State.

The Jets failed to score a touchdown for the third time in their last 5 games.
The Jets have scored fewer than 2 touchdowns in their last 8 games becoming the first team since the 2011 St Louis Rams to do that.
They’re the first team since the 1993 Bengals to register 10 or fewer touchdowns through 12 games

The Jets would pick 7th if the NFL draft were held today, but they are just one game out of picking 3rd. At this point, it may be more prudent to sit Rodgers the rest of the way knowing that could result in a top pick.

Can we take a minute to appreciate Jermaine Johnson? He had 6 pressures last night which included 3 QB hits and 1.5 sacks. He’s had an excellent second season, and you feel as though there’s more to come as well.

Tim Boyle had an off-target throw percentage of 28%, the 5th-highest mark of any QB this season. He was relieved by Siemian who had an off-target throw percentage of 30.8%, the second-worst mark. At least Siemian was trying to push the ball downfield.

At 4-8, the Jets are on the verge of being mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, phycologically they may have been eliminated the moment Rodgers went down. The Jets don’t have a QB on the active roster capable of playing with any level of consistency, they don’t have one able to operate the base principles of this offence.

Instead of offering platitudes C.J. Mosley called it as it is:

"The truth is, we have the quarterback position right now, the offence is struggling, the defence is just trying to maintain, special teams trying to do the same," Mosley said. "It's no secret. That's just the cards we were dealt this year."

I know it’s easy to blame Hackett and he’s been an issue this year, but the Jets had receivers open yesterday, Garrett Wilson beat his man on pretty much every snap and the Jets couldn’t find him. For once Saleh’s post-game defense of Hackett had some validity to it:

"I felt like there was a lot of missed opportunities with potential explosive plays, possible touchdowns, on the field today," Saleh said. "We've got to find a way to take advantage when we have those opportunities."

There’s a real lack of belief within this unit. We’ve got Breece Hall averaging 1.2 yards a carry. Even with a banged-up and ineffective offensive line, it’s hard to fathom how a player of his quality is averaging just over a yard a carry. But it was the same old story across the board.

Didn’t score in the red zone and went just 2/15 on third down, they also got flagged for 11 penalties. Ineffective and ill-disciplined, it’s the same story every single week. The Falcons had 194 of total yards, and we managed to give them 71 more yards through penalties.

I decided to collate the highlights of the Jets scoring points that were not off the boot of Greg Zuerlein

Incredible play by Quinnen Williams and Ashtyn Davis here, and Davis is slowly becoming a valuable member of the defence. He’s been improving over the last few weeks and the Jets may have felt more comfortable releasing Amos due to Ashtyn’s improvement.

But that’s the extent of the Jets end zone action. It’s unacceptable but we stick in this holding pattern waiting for Aaron, but the truth is that unless Aaron plays next Sunday against Houston, which he won’t, the Jets are done. If the Jets are done we don’t see Aaron again, if we don’t see Aaron again we don’t win another game this season. Which probably means we end up with a top-3 pick.

Robert Saleh wouldn’t commit to his QB next weekend, but we all know that it can’t be Tim Boyle. Unsurprisingly the guy who threw more interceptions than touchdowns in college and has never shown an ability to lead an NFL offence…can’t lead an nfl offence. He makes Zach Wilson look like Joe Montana and that’s saying something.

Saleh could go back to Wilson, and that’s what I expect him to do. But I don’t think it’ll matter. Houston is coming off a win against the red-hot Broncos, is 7-5, has an emerging QB who’s thrown for over 3500 yards with 20 TDs and just 5 INTs as a rookie, and has a defence who are allowing fewer points than the Jets.

Wilson, Boyle, Siemian…I don’t think it matters.

At this point, I don’t know what to say. You’re probably as fed up with this team as I am and if you’re even reading this then I appreciate it because I’d completely understand if the newsletter was no longer a desired morning read.