Offensive Woes - The Road Map

Edition #542

Good morning!

The newsletter is a little late today as I struggled to find a topic to write about. Part of me wanted to skip forward and just start talking about the 2024 draft, or free agency. I think we’ll get to that this week as the appetite to talk about the 2023 Jets is waning.

Robert Saleh confirmed that he won’t be making any coaching changes. This puts us in an awkward position where we have to accept two things. Either the Head Coach lacks the authority to make changes to his own staff (most likely), or that the Head Coach is incompetent and believes that scoring one or fewer touchdowns in 12 of 14 games is acceptable, or having 4 yards of offence at a half is acceptable. I’m sure some will argue that it’s both.

Today though, I want to take a look at how we got to the point we’re at today with the offence. While we could rewind 20 years for this, I’m going to focus on this current regime. The decision-making process of Joe Douglas when it comes to the offensive side of the ball.

The Jets have until tomorrow to activate Aaron Rodgers, if they fail to do so he’ll revert to IR for the rest of the season. Rodgers is yet to be cleared and this is what Saleh had to say about it yesterday: "Aaron wants to play; let's not confuse that one," Saleh told reporters. "That's why he's been working so hard to get back. His willingness to play, even if he's not 100%, is at the forefront of his mind. He wants to go, but ... until he's cleared, I'm not going to talk about it with anybody." It makes very little sense for you to play your prized asset who’s not 100% fit in meaningless games. Whether Aaron wants to play or not shouldn’t come into the equation.

Saleh was also asked if he thought he was coaching for his job over the final three games, and he replied he was just focusing on Washington. He was later pushed on the subject and he said “There are 2 types of coaches -- those who have been fired and those who will be” a nice soundbite, but technically not true at all. Good successful coaches can decide when they want to walk away, it’s the benefit of having success.

Zach Wilson is currently in the concussion protocol, but if cleared he will be the starter on Sunday (pending what happens with Rodgers). If Wilson can’t go then Trevor Siemian will get the start.

We’re still waiting on the injury news for some keep players, but according to Saleh “It doesn’t look good” for Quinton Jefferson. Jets continue to suffer an incredible amount of injuries, at some point this off-season I’m going to spend some time trying to contextualise those injuries, do we experience more, and do we lose more time? Or are we just really bad at creating depth? Maybe a mix of all three.

I was talking to a group of Jets fans about Joe Douglas and I would say the fan sentiment was evenly split. There was plenty of praise for his ability to maximise value in trades, like the Jamal Adams one and the Sam Darnold one…although maybe we’d have been better off keeping Sam, but that’s an alternative universe to explore another day. There was also praise for some waiver wire signings like JFM and Quincy Williams and UDFA signings like Bryce Huff and Tony Adams. Interestingly, all of those relate to the defensive side of the ball outside of the Sam Darnold trade.

I’m going to ignore 2019 as Douglas was hired after free agency and after the draft, but from 2020 onwards, what has his record looked like in terms of the offensive side of the ball? After all, it’s the GM’s job to construct the roster to be competitive across the board.

2020 Signings