It’s a tough time to be optimistic as a New York Jets fan. Sitting at 2-4 after a three-game losing streak in which all three games were easily winnable in the fourth quarter, there is a collective pessimistic mindset amongst Jets fans after they entered the season with Super Bowl hopes only six weeks ago.
Most Jets fans are probably wrestling with the same internal struggle at this moment: How can I possibly get excited about the incredible opportunity in front of this team while I still feel gutted by the miserable first six weeks of the season?
Week 7 Matchup
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The same franchise that once trotted out Bryce Petty, Chad Hansen, and ArDarius Stewart now features Aaron Rodgers, Davante Adams, and Garrett Wilson, on top of a defense that still ranks second-best in yards allowed per game. It’s a dream-like roster. Fans should be thrilled they get to watch this team, right?
Yet, following this week’s trade for Adams, the fanbase’s reaction was muted and apathetic. What should have been a celebration of the Jets adding the final piece to a potential title contender was treated as just another roster transaction. It could not even be described as bittersweet. It was just… bitter.
With the pain of Monday night’s loss fresh on everyone’s minds (the game ended less than 12 hours before the trade was reported), you could feel Jets fans’ collective hesitancy to get excited. When they saw Davante surprisingly pop up behind Aaron’s shoulder on The Pat McAfee Show, they wanted so badly to be ecstatic about the downright unbelievable offense their longtime scoring-averse franchise had put together, but they could not overcome the sting of that ghastly “2-4” in the standings.
Simply put, until the team starts winning games, fans could hardly care less about the Madden Franchise-esque roster assembled by the team.
And it is impossible to blame them. Jets fans have been hearing about the team’s potential “on paper” for decades, rarely seeing them live up to it. To be fair, they’ve never had a roster quite as stacked as this one, but 2-4 is 2-4. Zach Wilson had the Jets at 3-3 last year and 4-2 in 2022. Nobody cares about the talent on paper until it yields the expected results.
But fans want to be excited. Being pessimistic isn’t something Jets fans relish. It’s just been ingrained in them over many years of disappointment.
As often as Jets fans try to proclaim, “I’m done with this team,” or something to that effect, they know they are going to keep showing up and watching games every week for all of eternity. They just want it to be worth their while, rather than a torture exercise they participate in because they feel obligated due to the time they’ve invested in it.
It should be easier than ever before to feel like Jets games are worthwhile. Jets fans tuned in every week for some of the most hideous offenses in NFL history. Now they have – let me type out the names again to reiterate how unreal it is – Aaron Rodgers, Davante Adams, Garrett Wilson, and Breece Hall, along with a solid defense, and yet, being a Jets fan feels like a burden again despite being only six weeks into the season.
All Jets fans find themselves in the same quandary right now. They are trying to figure out the best mindset to embrace the Jets’ tantalizing potential without being hamstrung by the overshadowing thought of “Ugh, if only they were 3-3/4-2/5-1 right now.”
Fret no longer. After deeply thinking about sports fan psychology over the past few days (particularly Jets fan psychology, an entirely different field that requires its own specific degree), I have discovered the mindset that will put Jets fans back in the right headspace to get excited for this week’s game in Pittsburgh and the 10 games to follow.
The proper Jets fan mindset
Look, here’s the deal. If this Jets team cannot finish at least 8-3 over the next 11 games with…
- A trio of Rodgers/Adams/Wilson
- A big upgrade at offensive play caller (essentially offensive coordinator)
- The 32nd-ranked remaining strength of schedule based on DVOA
… then they were never doing anything in the playoffs anyway.
That is the mindset Jets fans must take with them.
So, screw the looming disappointment of Weeks 1-6 and the ensuing fear of that hypothetical scenario where the Jets finish with 7, 8, or 9 wins and we look back on these first six games thinking, “Wow, if only they barely won those ugly Denver, Minnesota, or Buffalo games, they’d have snuck into the playoffs!”
Why is that a scenario to fear? If the Jets cannot go 8-3 from here on out, Jets fans are not missing out on anything in the playoffs but a blowout loss in Houston at 4:25 p.m. on Wild Card Saturday.
Nice as it would be to end the long playoff drought, merely ending the drought was never the goal entering this season. It was to make a deep playoff run and seriously compete for a championship. The Jets doubled down on that goal by trading a future Day 2 pick for the nearly 32-year-old Adams.
So, go out there, win 8 of these next 11 games, and finish 10-7 to all but guarantee your spot in a weak AFC, entering the playoffs red-hot as a serious contender. (10 wins essentially guarantee a playoff spot; since the league expanded to 30 teams in 1995, no 10+ win AFC team has ever finished below 7th place in the conference. With the AFC’s 7th seed currently at 3-3, that will likely hold in 2024.)
If they fail to reach 10 wins, Jets fans should not lose sleep over these early losses, because a Jets team that finishes 7-4 or worse in this predicament (fueled by desperation, added Davante, upgraded at “OC,” easy schedule) was never winning a playoff game even if they finished off the victory in one or more of the three close losses from Weeks 4-6.
Where are the 4 respectable losses on this upcoming schedule if the Jets are a serious Super Bowl contender?
(In parentheses are the team’s rankings in overall DVOA)
- Week 7 @ Pittsburgh Steelers (16th)
- Week 8 @ New England Patriots (29th)
- Week 9 vs. Houston Texans (6th)
- Week 10 @ Arizona Cardinals (22nd)
- Week 11 vs. Indianapolis Colts (19th)
- Week 13 vs. Seattle Seahawks (14th)
- Week 14 @ Miami Dolphins (31st)
- Week 15 @ Jacksonville Jaguars (27th)
- Week 16 vs. Los Angeles Rams (25th)
- Week 17 @ Buffalo Bills (7th)
- Week 18 vs. Miami Dolphins (31st)
For the sake of this hypothetical exercise, we’ll chalk up the Texans and Bills games as losses. Obviously, the Jets are capable of winning either game, but we’re just mapping things out here in a simplistic fashion.
After those two games… where are the two other respectable losses if the Jets are to be taken seriously entering the playoffs? They can be afforded one random loss in there somewhere and still be viewed as a contender, but if they cannot win either game against a fellow AFC contender, losing two games against mediocre-or-worse competition would push them to the wrong side of the line that divides contenders and pretenders.
Pittsburgh is a tough team, especially in their house. But if the Jets cannot come out victorious this week with their backs against the wall, making it 2-5 with four straight losses, you can probably toss everything else out the window, anyway. So, that one is essentially a must-win if we’re being realistic about the team’s capability of doing what must be done.
Outside of Houston and Buffalo, the next-best team on the Jets’ schedule ranks 14th in DVOA, and New York will play that game at home off a bye week against a Seattle team traveling cross-country. Past that game and the Steelers game, every other team ranks 19th or worse.
The Dolphins will be more formidable if Tua Tagovailoa returns, but with the Dolphins playing 31st-ranked football right now, can Tua alone make them better than an average team at best? Especially coming off a serious head injury? Perhaps the Jets can respectably lose in Miami against a Tua-led team, but when they play the Dolphins at home in Week 18, that’s a must-win whether Tua plays or not. Miami has been infamously brutal after the calendar flips to December (4-10 including playoffs since 2022).
So, I ask you to stare this hypothetical scenario in the eye: The Jets finish 7-4 or worse, and when we look back at the first six weeks, we can see the Jets would have made the playoffs if they won any combination of the Broncos/Vikings/Bills games. Before you begin to shudder, stop yourself and think about how silly that is.
If the Jets fail to beat both Buffalo and Houston, and they drop multiple games out of this nine-game set…
- Desperation game in Pittsburgh this week
- Road games at the Cardinals (2-4), Jaguars (1-5), Dolphins (2-3), and Patriots (1-5)
- Home games against the Colts (3-3), Rams cross-country (1-4), Seahawks cross-country (3-3), and Winter Dolphins
… then Jets fans should be thankful that Greg Zuerlein spared them from watching a playoff beatdown. The same goes if the Jets beat one of BUF/HOU and lose a whopping 3+ of those other nine soft games, or if they somehow beat both contenders yet lose 4+ of the other nine.
The correct mindset for Jets fans is to embrace the lofty goal this team has decided to chase: a championship. If that is the goal, the Jets still have it in their control, and these first six games will not prevent them from achieving it. If they’re as great as they need to be to win a title, they will make the playoffs. If they miss the playoffs, it will be because they didn’t play like title contenders over the next 11 games, not because of the first six games.
The Jets’ season begins now. They are 0-0 with Davante Adams, no Robert Saleh, and no Nathaniel Hackett. Nothing that happened up to this point matters. Go 8-3.
If Jets fans embrace this mindset, they can feel as excited as they should be about this team’s unfathomable roster and tantalizing potential, all without being held back by what’s transpired until now.
