Endless loop of offensive ineptitude ruins once promising Jets season
The Jets fall to the Raiders, 16-12, in damning defeat. Plus, this team is trapped in a time loop of their own making.
What’s Up with the Jets? 🛩️
The Jets lost again to the Raiders by a 16-12 score on Sunday night (box)
New York has scored just 31 points on offense over their last three games (10.3 points per game) and has only scored eight offensive touchdowns all season long over nine games
QB Aaron Rodgers told NBC that he expects to be able to return from his torn Achilles by mid-December
QB Zach Wilson was up-and-down on the night, going 23/39 (58.9 percent) for 263 yards, no touchdowns and an interception, along with 54 rushing yards on four carries
The Jets were flagged for eight penalties in last night’s loss after being called for 17 in their previous two games
WR Garrett Wilson had nine catches for 93 yards on the night in the loss
Wilson said there could be a players only meeting this week in an attempt to address the issues on offense
TE Tyler Conklin was the Jets second best pass-catcher in the game, making seven catches for 70 yards
RB Breece Hall carried the ball just 13 times for 28 yards and had three catches for 47 yards
Last night was the third time that the Jets defense allowed 17 points or less and still lost
Game Balls 🏈
OFFENSE
🏈 Garrett Wilson: One of the only Jets offensive players that’s actually worth a damn, once again, was Garrett Wilson. Despite being the number one focus of opposing defenses and having a quarterback who is mediocre at his absolute best, Wilson is still managing to put up numbers and make incredible and explosive plays week-after-week for this team. After eight catches for 80 yards last week, Wilson hauled in another nine catches for 93 yards and was the main playmaker for a team that could use a few more of them.
DEFENSE
🏈 Quinnen Williams: A week after receiving some unfair criticism from Troy Aikman, Quinnen Williams had quite possibly his most impactful game of the season. On the night, Williams recorded a half-sack, four tackles (one for loss), three quarterback hits and even was credited with a pass defended. It was clear just from watching the game on TV that Williams was active and make his presence felt throughout the night. Pretty nice way to respond to the criticism.
Play of the Week 📺
Man, Garrett Wilson is an incredible football player. The only reason the Jets were even in this game was because of absurd plays like this from their star receiver.
He truly leaves it all out there on the turf.
The Jets offense is trapped in an exasperating loop ✍️
Round and around and around we go…
When it comes to the Jets offense, nothing ever seems to change. And at this point, we’ve seen the same game on replay so many times in a row at this point that we’re all on the brink of having our brains break.
Sunday night was yet another chapter in a big book of nothing as the Jets lost a game that effectively ended their season, falling to the Raiders by a measly 16-12 score. The story was exactly the same as it has been for this entire season — the defense played great, the special teams was mostly good, and the offense was an unmitigated disaster led by a quarterback who has been incapable of leading his team into the end zone at a near historic level.
I’m not going to make this week’s newsletter become a repeat of the criticisms we made against Zach Wilson last week, but we have to stop grading the guy on a curve. If this is the bar for a “good” game from this quarterback, than that bar lies in the center of the Earth’s core. This is a team that has seen the offense improve every single time he’s been replaced whether that’s been Joe Flacco, Mike White or even Josh Johnson. Every game, good or bad, for a Zach Wilson-led team results in 9-13 points on the scoreboard, 0-1 touchdowns and 1-2 horrible turnovers. And that hasn’t just been for this season, but now for three.
Imagine watching the same exact game play out over and over and over again for three straight seasons and expecting something different. That’s what Jets fans have been forced to do since the Saleh/Wilson era begun, and it makes things even more mind-numbingly awful when the coaching staff and front office refuses to do anything different.
This is a league that just saw a day where Josh Dobbs, Sam Howell, Baker Mayfield and the combination of Taylor Heinicke and Desmond Ritter were all able to put up at least 20 points in their games on Sunday, and yet the Jets can’t even score a single fucking touchdown for the second straight week.
“Well, there’s a lot of problems,” seems to be the weekly sentiment from this head coach but more and more it just sounds like a weak excuse for not doing anything from an organization that seemed to stop trying after Aaron Rodgers tore his Achilles. The Jets have not made a change at quarterback, never even bothered to bring in a real option as a backup, didn’t make any trades at the deadline, don’t involve or even activate Jason Brownlee or Izzy Abanikanda, never get creative with their plays on offense and refuse to change-up the playcalling duties and take them away from Nathaniel Hackett.
Hell, even Aaron Rodgers himself was caught shaking his head in disgust at one of Hackett’s third down play calls last night.
But no, the Jets haven’t done any of that. Honestly, it doesn’t even feel like they care at this point. They put in all their chips when they traded for Rodgers and instead of pivoting quickly in an attempt to keep the ship afloat in his absence, the team just threw their hands in the air and expected everyone to feel sorry for them and give them a mulligan. But there was a legitimate path for this team to still compete — they could have brought in a legitimate backup quarterback option the week Rodgers went down instead of never doing it. They could’ve made adjustments on offense a lot sooner. They could’ve shaken things up in so many more ways than they’ve even attempted to do.
And with the news that Rodgers could be ready to return as soon as mid-December, all the Jets would’ve needed to do was be a mediocre offense instead of a hoist prickly bad one in order to stay in contention long enough for a returning Rodgers to save them in a manner that you’d expect from a Hollywood movie.
But in the ultimate moment in irony, the return of Aaron Rodgers will mean nothing for the Jets because of their refusal to adequately replace him in the first place.
Next Week’s Game 🗓
Match-up: Jets (4-5) at Bills (5-4)
Where: Highmark Stadium – Buffalo, NY
When: 4:25 PM EST
Where to Watch: CBS
Around the NFL 🏁
Texas QB CJ Stroud continued his miraculous rookie campaign, throwing for over 350 yards in a last-second victory over the Bengals
The Browns overcame a late 14-point deficit to the Ravens in order to pull-out a 33-1 win
The Patriots benched QB Mac Jones on the final drive where his replacement Bailey Zappe threw a game-ending interception on a fake spike, losing to the Colts 10-6
The 49ers ended their three-game losing skid with a 34-3 blowout win over the Jaguars in Jacksonville
Vikings QB Josh Dobbs did it yet again, scoring two touchdowns in Minnesota’s 27-19 win vs the Saints
The Lions outlasted the Chargers in a 41-38 slugfest thanks to a game-winning field goal as time expired