Jets' homegrown talent needs to start taking ownership of losing culture

Quinnen Williams is coming off one of his strongest performances in a while, having recorded 1.5 sacks with two quarterback hits and a tackle for a loss against the Patriots on Sunday. After something of a slow start to this season he’s been heading in this direction lately, with 15 pressures since Week 5, tied for the second-most among defensive tackles in that span. And on Thursday night when the Jets host the Texans he’ll be going against an offensive line that is among the softest in the league at protecting up the middle. Houston’s interior linemen have allowed 79 pressures this season, fourth-most in the NFL.

“I’m just doing the necessary things we can do as a defensive line, especially with dominating the line of scrimmage, making knock-backs up front, and just being disruptive up front,” Williams said just a few weeks ago.

He said he wanted to change the role of his position group in the defense “to playmakers instead of placeholders” and he’s clearly done that. “This is definitely a key emphasis for the future to be dominating the line of scrimmage and being playmakers up front,” he said.

All of it means this could be one of those games where Williams truly puts his stamp on the outcome.

But there are more ways that the Jets need Williams to have an impact than just by sacking C.J. Stroud and tackling Joe Mixon at MetLife Stadium.

The Jets have spent ridiculous amounts of resources acquiring players and coaches from other programs who they thought would change their essence. Some of them came in with dazzling resumes while others were simply adjacent to winning, but each of them arrived feeling as if they could rassle to submission this bear of a pathos that has so long exemplified the organization.

So far the franchise’s nature has won out over any and all attempts to nurture the losing out of the building.

Maybe, then, it shouldn’t fall on the transient talents of players such as Aaron Rodgers, Davante Adams, Tyron Smith and Haason Reddick, just to name a few, to alter the “culture” that has been festering in Florham Park for years. That kind of change needs to come not from those who parachute in, but from those whose NFL careers were born in the darkness and misery that the Jets have come to embody.

It’s up to the Jets’ homegrown talent to start taking ownership for the shortcomings that have befallen them and quit looking to the outside for help. There are enough players on the roster who were drafted by the Jets, have experienced the pains that come with such a heredity, and have the skills to do something about it. Sauce Gardner, Garrett Wilson, Breece Hall, Jamien Sherwood and Joe Tippmann are all born-and-bred Jets. So too are Will McDonald, Michael Carter and Jeremy Ruckert. Alijah Vera-Tucker would be in that group if he could remain healthy; he’ll miss a second straight game Thursday night with an ankle injury.

Beyond them, though, sits Williams, the longest-tenured only-Jet who was not just drafted to play here but then chose to stay when he signed his massive extension last summer that could keep him in New York through the 2027 season.

“The success of this organization is beyond important to me and completing this deal allows me to turn all my attention to positively impacting that,” Williams said in a statement when he inked that deal.

He’s played OK since the signing but has done little to back up that spoken clause of the contract.

Williams was drafted in the first round in 2019, which means he’s been here long enough to be considered part of the problem. The Jets are 27-55 in the 82 games he has played in for them under three head coaches and has obviously never reached the playoffs. So when Rodgers and Adams talk about exorcising the demons that haunt this team, they’re talking about the distant hazy past of Butt Fumbles and fake spikes but also, and perhaps more directly, about Williams’ tenure and what it has wrought.

But he is still just 26 years old and obviously very talented, which means it’s not too late for him to become part of the solution, too.

Interim coach Jeff Ulbrich was asked after Sunday’s loss to the Patriots that dropped the Jets to 2-6 if it is difficult to convince players who have been here for a while that things can change for the better. “There’s a part of it that’s some blind faith when it comes to that, and understanding that all I can do is work, and you stack enough work up in a productive way that it results in the results that we want,” he said. “At the same time, we’re going to have to lean on some of these veterans that we have in this locker room, some guys that have been through it and some guys that have rebounded.”

He and the Jets are still looking in the wrong places for that. This organization doesn’t need any more transplants. It doesn’t need people coming in from elsewhere to tell them how things are done.

It needs to heal from within.

That process must begin with Williams.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

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.