Jets' season has gone from great hope to despair
Zach Wilson (2) and D.J. Reed of the Jets walk off the field after a 19-3 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars at MetLife Stadium on Thursday night. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Less than two weeks ago, Robert Saleh was brazenly predicting a third opportunity to face the Bills.
After the Jets’ most recent loss, a fourth straight that dropped the Jets below .500, he could barely entertain the thought of a postseason in any future scenario.
It’s been that precipitous a fall for the Jets.
“It’s not about playoffs right now,” Saleh conceded after their 19-3 loss to the Jaguars on Thursday night, channeling his inner Jim Mora but without the squeaky, sarcastic voice.
“It’s not. We played four consecutive teams in the hunt for the playoffs and we battled three of them. Really disappointed about this showing [against the Jaguars]. But right now it’s not about playoffs, it’s about getting off this mat and trying to find a way to put together a football game.”
Usually, that would be exactly what we’d want to hear. There are 10 days before the next game, which gives the Jets plenty of time to figure out a few of their problems, get their best quarterback option healthy from the rib injury that sidelined him for two straight games, and get back on track.
But the reality is this season, which began with so much optimism and built to the point that saying the words “Super’’ and “Bowl’’ in the same sentence was not absurd enough to warrant stares in public, almost certainly will fizzle into yet another disappointment.
For the 12th straight year, the longest active streak in the NFL, the Jets appear destined to miss out on any opportunities beyond their regular-season schedule.
Shame on us for allowing ourselves to believe, for getting sucked into the kind of hope that seems to exist for only 31 of the 32 teams in the sport.
This wasn’t an elimination game, it was worse. It forces the Jets to spend the holiday weekend watching to see if they can survive.
The next time they step on a football field for a game, Jan. 1 in Seattle, they already might be knocked out of contention. It might even happen before they return to work from their weekend respite, a rare late-season mini-vacation thanks to the midweek contest.
Whenever it happens, it seems inevitable at this point.
“That is obviously something that makes everyone feel embarrassed,” center Connor McGovern said of the glum mathematics regarding their status. “It’s just an extra sting to everything that happened.”
The weekend before Thanksgiving, the Jets visited New England with a chance to move into first place in the division. Including that game, which ended on a season-pivoting punt return for a touchdown, they have lost five of their last six. They will finish this weekend in last place in the AFC East and potentially as low as 12th in the conference.
For fans, Thursday was the final opportunity to see this team in person. The Jets close their schedule with road games in two opposite corners of the country — Seattle and Miami — and even if they somehow manage to squeak into the tournament, they’ll be one of the lowest seeds and spend their January away from MetLife.
Before they next play a home game in September 2023, they will have a lot to figure out, much more than they can manage in the short time before the Seattle trip.
Zach Wilson’s fate is chief among them. He came up most feeble for them in the two games against the Patriots and could not generate anything resembling a rhythm against the Jaguars, the three seemingly winnable games that most doomed this team.
There will be other options the Jets must examine at quarterback — veterans and draft picks alike — but they also must search their collective being to see what they think about the one they have in hand.
Near the end of his postgame news conference Thursday night, right after he benched Wilson for a practice- squad quarterback, Saleh dropped one last almost imperceptible sentence of verbal support behind the player the Jets used a second overall pick on, the player about whom many outside and some in the organization are having second thoughts.
“We haven’t seen the last of him,” Saleh said.
Maybe.
But Wilson made it almost certain we have seen the last of the Jets’ playoff hopes for this season.
As far as lingering images go, then, definitely for this home slate and perhaps this quarterback experiment, this one was rather apt: a barren stadium on a cold, rainy, wind-swept night when only the most miserable souls dared venture forth, and those who did almost gleefully booing the player on whose shoulders once rode so many hopes of change and a departure from same old-ness.
Ladies and gentlemen, your 2022 Jets.
Who needs a curtain call after that?
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.
