Jets need to beat Cardinals to prove their big Thursday night win over Texans wasn't a fluke
New York Jets offensive tackle Olu Fashanu (74) lifts wide receiver Davante Adams (17) after his touchdown during the second half of an NFL football game against the Houston Texans, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024, in East Rutherford, N.J. Credit: AP/Frank Franklin II
The Jets won the last time they played, as you may have heard.
More than a week later, they are still choking up talking about that 21-point second half in their Halloween game against the Texans, framing it as if it were a replaying of Super Bowl III, recalling it with hopeful eyes and fond tales. They are convinced that those 30 minutes of their best football of the season — preceded, few mention, by 30 minutes of some of their worst — represents a true turning point for them.
General manager Joe Douglas, who spoke to reporters this past week, perhaps for the last time in his current role, pointed to that effort as a harbinger of future success in several instances.
“I focus on the second half of the Houston game and all the positives that came out of that game or that half, with our pass rush and the way that we strung three unbelievable offensive drives together,” he said. “I think you guys got to see what it should look like with two elite wide receivers in Garrett [Wilson] and Davante [Adams]. Aaron [Rodgers] is feeling really good, and I think you saw that on Thursday night too.”
Rodgers also was beaming about it.
“You’ve just got to remember what we did in that second half,” he said of the key to building off it. “Execution was good, details were good . . . Probably the best I’ve played. I felt good about my play. Second half of that game, we had a lot of guys on the same page the entire time.”
He went as far as to say that the performance and the result changed the psyche of the entire team.
“I think there was a weight lifted off,” he said. “There’s a baseline level of energy and enthusiasm that we kind of held ourselves to in training camp, and we haven’t necessarily been there the entire time.”
That’s nice.
Too bad the Jets have lost any and all benefit of the doubt when it comes to sustained winning or interpreting victories as turning points. This is a team, lest we forget, that won a convincing contest on a Thursday night less than two months ago, one that appeared to signal a new level of competence and confidence. Then they lost five straight.
That’s just this season. Go back the last decade and a half and it feels as if any time the Jets gain just a little bit of forward momentum, it lasts about as long as a commercial break in the game. This is a team that last year won three straight to improve to 4-3, then lost five in a row. A team that was 7-4 in 2022 and lost its last six.
Playing winning football has been achievable for them at certain points. Sustaining it has been the real issue. And credibly predicting it? That’s not something these Jets should be in the business of even attempting to do.
So pardon us if we are growing tired of these cries of “Wolf!” from this team. There have been far too many false flags over the years to trust this one. Fool us once, shame on the Jets. Fool us 7,529 times and counting, shame on us. (And probably the Jets, too.)
“It’s just the little things, just doing those little things in critical moments, red zone, special teams, just executing those little things consistently and finishing out those close games,” Douglas said of what has kept the Jets from being as good as they think they can be throughout his time here. “We were able to do that Thursday night and we need to carry that forward.”
At least Rodgers knows that what happened against the Texans, while positive, does not automatically transform this team into something it has yet to demonstrate it can be. Asked why anyone should believe it was a pivot point when that Thursday win before it against the Patriots turned out to be a fraudulent one, he shrugged.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, the season goes on. Every challenge is different.”
Maybe the Jets will keep playing the way they did against the Texans as they face the Cardinals on Sunday. Maybe that was the great light switch that was flicked on. They might be able to get themselves on a little bit of a run even and could make things interesting down the stretch. It was fun to see what Wilson and Adams were able to do on the field together, what Rodgers was able to do with them, and they should only continue to grow as a cohesive passing unit.
“I do think after the Thursday night game, the way we finished the game, the way we came out in the second half, I think [interim coach Jeff Ulbrich] had a great message to the team on Monday,” Douglas said. “He said, ‘Look, guys, none of this started the way we wanted it, but we still have everything in front of us. Every goal we want to accomplish is still out in front of us.’ ’’
As long as the Jets keep looking forward to that, they’ll have a shot. It’s when they look backward, trying to recapture the magic of Halloween, when they are more likely to get their feet tangled and trip over themselves.
“We’re starting to do some of the right things,” Rodgers said, “but we’re a work in progress still.”
The Jets haven’t arrived. They haven’t altered their ID. They played one good but far-from-perfect half of football against a team that was, at many positions, too banged up to fully and competently compete against them.
Feel free to hope that those 30 minutes represent a tremendous shift in this team. But don’t be foolish enough to believe it until the Jets are able to prove it with their play.
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.