Patriots 25 Jets 22: One Thing Is Clear…The 2024 New York Jets Are a Terrible Football Team

I think there are points in life where you need to admit the obvious. For the New York Jets we have reached one of those points.

For all of the big names on the roster. For all of the expectations. For all of the offseason media hype. For everything. One thing is now clear.

The 2024 New York Jets are a bad football team. In fact, they are one of the worst teams in the NFL.

What else can we conclude? The Jets are now 2-6. They are on a five game losing streak after today’s 25-22 loss to the New England Patriots. Their only two wins were against these Patriots, who now sport an identical record and the now 1-6 Titans, a team that lost 52-16 to the Detroit Lions on Sunday.

It’s easy to try and talk yourself into believing the Jets are actually a decent team if not just for a few bounces of the ball. You could say that if Greg Zuerlein just doesn’t miss an extra point and a field goal, the Jets win today. You could even talk yourself into believing the only difference between the Jets being 2-6 and 5-3 is Zuerlein as misses impacted two other games.

There are a couple of problems with this logic.

The first is it implies the Jets played a winning game against New England, which they very much did not. This was a team that committed 8 penalties, wasted 4 timeouts, and allowed a backup quarterback to mount not one but two go ahead scoring drives in the fourth quarter. The fact the Jets were in a position to win the game at all reflects on how low New England’s talent level was more than anything. The Jets didn’t play a winning game that saw defeat snatched from victory by the kicker. They were a team that was in a position to win in spite of itself as was the case in almost every other contest in this five game losing streak. I promise you that in any other game Zuerlein missed a kick, you can find a number of pivotal plays where the Jets made pivotal errors.

The second and more emblematic issue relates to how the Jets have responded to Zuerlein’s struggles. It’s not like he was rock solid entering the game. He has been one of the worst kickers in the league all season.

That happens. Quality kickers just have seasons where they randomly go into slumps. This is one reason investing big money into kickers is a bad idea. There is a lot of randomness in performance. After weeks of struggling, however, the Jets made no move at the position aside from bringing in a couple of free agents for token workouts.

If I told you Sunday morning that Zuerlein would miss a pair of kicks, would you have been surprised? Of course not. He has been shaky all year. So why has no change been made to date?

The Jets don’t like to address problems. They like to find a single savior and/or scapegoat for their problems. Remember last year when Woody Johnson kept Robert Saleh for another year? His stated logic was that the Jets needed to keep continuity, and the failure of the 2023 quarterback was solely about the quarterback getting hurt.

Only five weeks into the 2024 season, he changed course. Saleh became the scapegoat. A handful of games after preaching the need for continuity, Johnson was telling us that you can’t expect a different result when you keep doing the same thing. Never mind all of the other issues on the team.

Then firing Saleh didn’t spark the team that first week because Mike Williams purportedly ran the wrong route. Davante Adams became the new savior as the owner told us all about the importance of chemistry between a quarterback and his wide receivers.

Along the way, Haason Reddick also returned to the lineup to fix the pass rush. Adams and Reddick were nonfactors in this game.

The Jets had a problem with their kicker this entire time. But they didn’t address it because they kept finding these single moves that would fix everything. Or so they thought.

The real issue isn’t any single issue. It’s that the 2024 Jets are a poorly conceived and poorly built team. They are relying on too many old players who are past their prime and rapidly declining in front of our eyes. That includes the quarterback Johnson thought would be the franchise’s savior, Aaron Rodgers who continued to look shaky and inconsistent in this game. The coaching change hasn’t helped at all. Jeff Ulbrich is now 0-3 since taking over for Saleh. At best, it has been a complete nonfactor on the team. At worst, losing Saleh has had a negative impact on the defense.

If history holds, the Jets will cut Zuerlein this week and treat this as the ultimate fix.

And it won’t be unjust. His performance merits a change. Just as dumping Zach Wilson was justified. Just as Saleh wasn’t a good head coach whose record merited a dismissal. Just as Williams’ struggles created issues at wide receiver.

But at some point it becomes clear that the issues on this team are too pronounced to be one fix away. Greg the Leg making those kicks could have won the game, but so could have the Jets avoiding self-inflicted mistakes on both sides of the ball.

Right now the Jets have the 20th best point differential in the league. Nine of the twelve teams behind them are stuck on either one or two wins.

The Jets entered the week ranking 21st in DVOA on both offense and defense.

There isn’t much to say other than that this team isn’t very good.

You can address the problem of the week every seven days from now until the end of the season. Unfortunately, there are no good solutions to any of them. And even if there were, there are a lot of other problems awaiting this team in its next game.