Jets appear to be unsalvageable after latest debacle in Foxborough
Aaron Rodgers of the Jets walks off the field after the game against the New England Patriots at Gillette Stadium on Sunday in Foxborough, Mass. Credit: Getty Images/Adam Glanzman
FOXBOROUGH, Mass.
Throughout most of this past miserable month, the Jets always had at least one truism they could hold on to tightly no matter how gloomy their disposition became and how awful their performances were.
Even when they couldn’t score a touchdown against the Broncos, when they were smacked around by the Steelers and when they coughed away a lead to the Bills, they could honestly say that everything they wanted to accomplish was still there for them to achieve.
It wasn’t too late for this team to turn itself around, start playing up to its potential, go on a run and at least contend for that playoff spot that has eluded them for 13 straight seasons.
But now it is. These Jets seem to be unsalvageable.
To borrow a word from the Jets’ unofficial chief of vocabulary, this sure felt like their denouement.
If it is, their season ended in the same graveyard where so many others lie, Gillette Stadium, after Sunday’s 25-22 loss to a lowly Patriots team whose roster has no players who would start over any of the Jets if the teams somehow were combined. And yet these undermanned and hamfistedly- coached New Englanders had the advantage of a few things the Jets lack in just about everything they try to do:
Heart. Determination. Purpose.
The Patriots may not have the future Hall of Fame quarterback or have traded for a flashy All-Pro receiver or have just added an All-Pro edge rusher or even boast a stable of talented young stars the way the Jets do. In the end, none of that mattered on Sunday. Nor does it seem poised to matter at any point in the foreseeable future for these spiraling Jets.
Interim coach Jeff Ulbrich was almost trembling with disgust while talking about this most recent collapse. Aaron Rodgers, his ball cap pulled down over his eyes to create an almost impenetrable shadow, offered short, choppy, mumbly answers to questions he’d usually reply to with 1,000-word op-eds.
Davante Adams, he of the great speech that was supposed to inspire his new team and save the season, fled the scene before reporters in the locker room could ask him about the goings-on of this day. So did Garrett Wilson. And Breece Hall, the last man out of the locker room, spent most of his time after the loss with a towel draped over his head in silent contemplation.
At least Ulbrich was able to talk with some panache about the situation, calling this “a moment of darkness” for the team and the organization while suggesting that many of the players who have been around for a few years and have known nothing but such blackness should rely on “blind faith” to believe that there is a light out there somewhere for them to chase.
It’s not so much the math of the 2-6 record they now carry that is their cause of death. With 17-game seasons and expanded playoff pools, even that steep slope theoretically can be traversed. But what have the Jets shown to indicate they have anything needed to make that climb? No, it’s this horrific stretch of excruciating football that tolls the funeral bell on these 2024 Jets.
“We say ‘that’s not who we are,’ ” Ulbrich noted, “but it’s who we are until we demonstrate otherwise.”
Most teams facing such dire prospects would begin to give younger players more snaps or consider unloading some veterans, but the Jets don’t even have that going for them right now. They mortgaged that for this all-in experiment that is decaying in spectacular fashion.
Jets games for the rest of the season will feel like Las Vegas casino implosions: Scheduled events that gather crowds to gawk at the collapse, watch the edifice turn into debris, and wonder about what might be built on the same spot to eventually take its place.
Rodgers, who was brought here to change all of this, was asked on Sunday if transforming the Jets’ culture — a fancy word for expecting to lose and then doing so — has proved harder than he anticipated when he first walked into the team’s facility and smugly noted how lonely their one Super Bowl trophy looked. He called it “a little dramatic of a question.”
Rodgers. Aaron Rodgers. Called something dramatic. That’s rich.
He also was asked if it is difficult for players who have not experienced success to keep the belief that these struggles can be overcome. “I imagine it could be, yeah,” he said. “Not for me, but I imagine it could be.”
Rodgers wouldn’t say what his message is or will be for this team. But he did offer a clue in regard to Ulbrich’s description of the situation.
“Yeah, I’ve been in the darkness,” he said, a cheeky reference to the retreat he undertook in 2023 before emerging after several days of sensory deprivation and deciding he would like to become a Jet. “You’ve got to go in there and make peace with it.”
That’s what people do when they have no other options, no avenues of escape. It’s what they do when they have zero control over their destiny.
Maybe that is the answer for these Jets.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.