If Jets truly are playoff contenders, they must beat Patriots in Week 3
Jets head coach Robert Saleh on the sidelines during the second quarter against the Dallas Cowboys at AT&T Stadium on September 17, 2023 in Arlington, Texas. Credit: Getty Images/Richard Rodriguez
There were three games that the Jets really wanted to win this season when they acquired Aaron Rodgers. They firmly believed that he would be able to deliver those victories, too.
One was the Super Bowl. Oh, well.
That seems unlikely to happen now that Rodgers has been lost for the season — and yes, Aaron, we’ll keep calling it a “season-ending” Achilles injury until the unlikely scenario unfolds in which we have to apologize for being premature in that characterization.
The other two circled contests, though, are the ones that have been a barometer for this organization for most of this century, the games that have consistently defined the Jets and told us where they stand . . . usually not for the better.
They are the two annual games against AFC East rival New England, the first of which will be played Sunday at MetLife Stadium.
If the Jets want us to believe they still are a playoff-contending team because of their defense and running game, neither of which showed up in the 30-10 loss to Dallas, then they have to figure out a way to get past New England.
More importantly, if the Jets want to truly believe it about themselves, they pretty much have to win this game.
This is a rival that has long been an impediment to any Jets success and has always served to demonstrate how the Jets feel about themselves. Like it or not, those helmets and uniforms of the Patriots are in the heads of everyone at One Jets Drive.
Sunday is an opportunity to get them out of there. Maybe for good.
Even without Rodgers, victory in this one should be within the Jets’ grasp — or at least within their potential.
“They’ve had our number, but that’s the past, though,” defensive lineman Solomon Thomas said on Monday. “We are trying to focus on the future, focus on the present moment, and this upcoming game. That’s all we’re worried about. We’re worried about coming back and beating a team we know we can beat playing our style of football . . . It’s a big game for us.”
This matchup comes at a good time for the Jets. New England’s presence grabs them by their lapels and forces them to put their Dallas troubles in the past quickly.
“That’s one way to look at it, knowing it’s a divisional opponent and knowing what this win means when we have to face this team later on down the road,” linebacker C.J. Mosley said on Monday. “But at the end of the day, it’s another chance to get better, another chance to get that bad taste out of our mouth. Go back to Jet Life and have some fun.”
If the Jets do win Sunday, they’ll be in about as good a position as they could have hoped for with Rodgers at the helm, but they’ll have gotten there largely without him. They’ll be 2-1 overall and 2-0 in the division. There still will be a long way to go, but everything they aimed for still will be within reasonable range.
Those are just surface narratives, though. The real essence of this game lies in the core-based ferocity with which the Jets need to change their trajectory against New England.
Obviously, there is no more Tom Brady to spook them, but even without him in recent years, the Patriots have remained Jets tormentors. Now, though, the Pats are quite literally right back where they were when Brady first took the field for them — against the Jets, mind you — in 2001. That was the last time the Patriots started a season with two straight losses before these past two weeks.
Of course, they wound up making the playoffs that year and winning the Super Bowl and then a few others after that. But this particular New England crew doesn’t seem as if has that kind of short- or long-term bounce-back ability, which gives the Jets a chance to truly slay them and bury all that has pestered them over the years.
One minor glitch: No one seems to think they can do it. The Jets are three-point underdogs in this home game. And in Rodgers’ stead, they have Zach Wilson at quarterback with his 0-4 career record against the Patriots. It includes two touchdown passes and seven interceptions, four of which came in the season-pivoting 10-3 loss in Foxborough last November.
Rodgers was supposed to remedy that haunted history. He was supposed to give the Jets a true quarterback advantage in this rivalry for the first time in decades. He was supposed to be the quarterback who put fear in the heart of Bill Belichick and shielded the offense from whatever defensive potions he could brew for them.
Now the Jets have to do that for themselves.
Maybe that’s better. If they can beat the Patriots without their hired-gun quarterback, it might mean more than those few other momentary celebrations against New England in the past.
This Jets season was always scheduled to start in Week 3 after the throat-clearing games against Buffalo and Dallas, and before the Week 4 and 6 games against the two participants in last year’s Super Bowl. This was the one game the Jets had to have in their treacherous opening six-game span if they were going to contend.
But more to the point, Sunday was always about the opportunity to announce that the power dynamic between them and the Patriots has been altered. Shattered, even.
Rodgers’ absence hasn’t changed that. It’s amplified it.
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.
