This Team is a Meme

Edition #740

Good morning ☕

Don’t waste your energy on the Jets today. Don’t waste your time on this team. Go outside, read a book, learn a language, but the energy you’d usually put into this team doing something else, anything.

Any hope that the Jets could salvage this season from the wreckage of the first 8 weeks was dashed last night with one of the most hopeless, insipid and embarrassing losses in recent memory.

It would take a 10,000 word dissertation to explain everything that’s wrong with this team. It’s rotten from the top to the very bottom and at this point the team is just a walking meme, a bad sitcom masquerading as a professional football outfit.

Let’s just summarise very quickly and then get on with our day

• This week the Jets had a tackling clinic following a series of issues through the season. The clinic was designed to teach form and consistency, ensuring that the Jets could keep Kyler Murray and James Conner. The Jets proceeded to miss 20 tackles last night, tied for the most by any team this season. Murray/Conner combined for 3 rushing touchdowns and the Cardinals finished with 123 yards after contact on runs and passes, which is their highest of the season. I’m not sure who gave that clinic on tackling, but I don’t think his future is that bright. Or maybe the Jets are just that incompetent. Sauce Gardner had another really bad one, but it’s got to a point where I’m more surprised when he makes a tackle.

• While we’re talking about Kyler Murray, the Jets made him look like prime Tom Brady. Murray completed 91.7% of his passes and became the first player in NFL history to complete 85% of his passes with 250 Pass yds & 2 Rush TD. The Jets sacked him just once and the vaulted Jets pass defence looked soft and outclassed. Sauce Gardner has regressed so spectacularly and if we’re being honest, the defense as a whole has taken a step back since Robert Saleh was let go. We can say what we like about his ability as a head coach, but nobody questioned his ability as a defensive coordinator. His firing mid-season has impacted the defense.

• The Cardinals scored on all five of their offensive possessions to start the game. Those drives included four touchdown drives of 70+ yards. If started badly, it ended even worse. Murray set a franchise-record for most completions to end the game with 17. The Jets defense was non-existent all day, they were so brittle, so unprepared and so flat, they may as well have spent the day at the Grand Canyon.

• Aaron Rodgers looked every bit a 40-year-old QB last season. He was pressured a lot and the offensive line were a disaster, but he needs to take a lot of ownership on the performance. He completed 63% of his passes (22/35) but only one completion travelled more than 10 yards in the air. He missed a wide open Tyler Conklin in the end zone and that’s not the first time he’s missed a wide open player in the end-zone. His 4.3 yards per attempt was his lowest since 2019, his 153 passing yards was the lowest of the season and it was as clear as day he was trying to force the ball to Adams. All this against one of the worst passing defences in football. In fact the Cardinals have struggled defending the deep ball all season and the Jets attempted just two throws over 20 yards. Both incomplete.

• "I thought after a big win Thursday night, a nice long week, we were going to come out with a lot of energy and win the game, and we didn't come out with great energy on either side of the ball," - That’s the second time in three games that Rodgers has questioned the teams energy. These guys only play 17 games a season, if they can’t muster the energy to come out and perform then they shouldn’t be playing the game. You can’t get yourself up for paying in front of 63,000+ people at State Farm with millions watching around the world? Find a new profession.

• I don’t know what to say about Jeff Ulbrich who’s 1-4 since taking over from Saleh. The problems are the same but now there is an energy problem, which is the exact opposite of what we were promised. Woody Johnson said he fired Saleh for a spark, well Ulbrich’s star is dimming. ‘Red supergiant stars will dramatically dim in their last few months, becoming about 100 times fainter in visible light. The dimming occurs because the stars suddenly accumulate material around them, blocking their starlight.’ - If there was every a metaphor for Jeff Ulbrich it’s a red supergiant star, the players around him are weighing heavy and causing his star to dim.

• Talking about stars that are dimming, the shine that Todd Downing enjoyed a few weeks ago has well and truly disappeared. Three straight passes from the 3-yard line when you have a power back in Allen and Breece Hall is criminal. I have no idea if Rodgers audibled out of a run, he probably did. But the whole gameplan was so poorly constructed from start to finish. I would say that Keith Carter’s is dimming as well, but that star imploded on itself weeks ago.

• The Jets had 10 days to prepare for the game but unlike most teams, the Jets have always struggled when they had extra time. Since 2016 they are 4-23 when having 7+ days to prepare for a game, that’s the worst record in the NFL by quite a margin. I have no idea what causes this, it doesn’t happen with any other team but the Jets like to find ways to set the worst records in the NFL.

Again, don’t dedicate any of the precious time you have to this team today. If you’ve got this far then I applaud your commitment. The playoffs are gone and now it’s time to turn our focus to the same things we turn our focus to every year around November. Who are the free agents we should target? Who are the players in the draft we should target? But first, who’s the GM capable of turning this around? Who’s a good head coach who would want to come here?

I’ll get into some of that this week as yet again we look to the future while most teams are enjoying the run to the playoffs. Only the Jets. The biggest joke in professional sports.

I don’t want Rex Ryan back as the coach. I’ve made that very clear. But I’m going to leave you with this SNY video of Bart Scott talking about making adjustments on the fly. I haven’t seen the Jets make any adjustments on the fly for about 10 years.