Disjointed Jets searching for answers, but first they need to get on the same page
Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers warms up before an NFL game against the Pittsburgh Steelers in Pittsburgh on Sunday. Credit: AP/Matt Freed
Aaron Rodgers said the Jets were “flat” during warmups and at halftime on Sunday night. Jeff Ulbrich said on Monday he thinks the players and coaches are “pressing” and trying too hard. Joe Tippmann says the team can’t simply rely on Rodgers to bail them out, but they have to do their jobs so that Rodgers can, well, bail them out. And Solomon Thomas said the defense needs to get back to being “the reason this team wins,” needs to start coming up with takeaways and stops, but they can’t force those to happen.
How can we expect this team to come up with answers to their problems when they don’t even seem to know what the questions should be?
Right now it feels as if they are just talking themselves into the same dizzying diametric spirals they are playing in, an endless contradiction cyclone of blind grasping at hopeful cliches that offers no concrete solution, no plan for fixing things and no vision for what this talented but clearly incoherent team is supposed to look like. They can’t even decide amongst themselves if they were too hyped up with urgency and want-to in the 37-15 loss to the Steelers, or if there was not enough of it to go around.
They are a piecemeal collection of players giving piecemeal explanations and excuses while producing piecemeal results.
This has undoubtedly been a whirlwind season for the Jets in terms of comings and goings, narrative arcs and expectations. They have welcomed two separate All-Pro players into their locker room in the last week alone under very different circumstances and underwent a very sudden head coaching change earlier this month. Such hysteria can generate a twitchy response and an impulse to keep up with the frenetic pace of life at One Jets Drive.
Ulbrich, the interim coach whose opinions on these topics should matter more than most, firmly believes that his Jets just need to chill. When it comes to their play at least, they should focus on less if they hope to accomplish more.
In other words: Just (Don’t) Do It.
“There is an element right now, because of the high character of our locker room and this team, that there is a bit of pressing to make things happen,” Ulbrich said on Monday. “It’s coming from the absolute best place on earth, guys wanting to do their best and provide the best for their teammates and this organization, this fanbase. We have all got to take a deep breath and just do our job collectively.”
Ulbrich said that goes for everybody, from the quarterback to the last guys on the depth chart to the coaching staff.
“That need, that want to do more than we need to do, that can get in our way sometimes,” he said. “It’s not pressing from a selfish standpoint. I think there is a strong connection on this team, stronger than most that I’ve been around, and they just want to do right for each other . . . That can get us all a little bit out of whack at times, myself included.”
At the same time, if the Jets are going to change the trajectory of this season, they’d better do it quickly because the clock is getting close to running out on them.
Luckily for the Jets they face a Patriots team on Sunday that sports just as many personality disorders as they seem to have. It should be an easy win for the Jets, just like it was when they hosted New England in Week 3 and for a brief moment everything seemed right and trouble-free in their world.
At the same time, what a terrible opponent to be facing at this critical juncture. What a dangerous trap for them to fall back into as they attempt to balance their pressing with their flatness and their deep breathing with their hyperventilation. The Jets may not have a true identity right now, but if they fall to the Patriots they’ll be cemented as losers and will have all but forfeited any hopes of making the playoffs.
Thomas said he turns to a trusted philosopher during such times: Kobe Bryant. The defensive lineman cited some of Bryant’s “Mamba Mentality” teachings in regard to this current Jets conundrum.
“You don’t want to force things to happen,” Thomas said. “Sometimes you want something so bad, in that gravitational world you push things away. It’s important to do your job, to trust yourself, to be present in that moment. To give it all you can but stay in your zone . . . Do your job, do what you can, believe in yourself, believe in your teammate and all will take care of itself.”
The Jets had better hope so. Because if taking care of this is going to be left to them exclusively, they may be in bigger trouble than any of them realizes.
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.
