After perhaps the New York Jets’ most demoralizing loss yet, the disappointment, agony, and wrath of fans everywhere has yet to dissipate. Whatever the names on paper may say, the naked eye is more than enough to say that this team does not resemble a competitive unit, let alone a playoff one.
The Jets are currently 12th out of 16 teams in the AFC standings, and the only teams worse are the Jaguars, Titans, Browns, and Patriots. Incidentally, both of the Jets’ wins came against teams in that group, which means they are closer to 0-7 than competitive football.
Incredibly, ESPN Analytics gives the Jets a 47% chance of making the playoffs. As ESPN’s Rich Cimini stated on X, “Mr. Analytics must be a Jets fan.” NFL.com’s modeling has them at 34%, which seems more realistic but still too high.
Could the Jets go on a run? Hope springs eternal, but the likelihood of that is always low. Until then, it looks like the Jets are learning a fundamental life lesson the hard way.
There are few shortcuts to success.
If there were no shortcuts to success, people would be far more likely to stop trying to take them. But there are always outliers enticing the masses to follow suit, only to meet with the expected failure.
In 2020, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the Super Bowl after importing Tom Brady and some of his minions. In 2021, the Rams acquired Matthew Stafford and a host of all-in veterans and won it all. Of course, that made other teams think they could throw caution to the winds and come out with the same result.
The 2022 Broncos should have been a warning. They acquired Russell Wilson coming off a down year (in which injuries played a role) and thought themselves Super Bowl contenders.
Not only were the Broncos not Super Bowl contenders, but Wilson finished with a record of 4-11, leading the team to a 5-12 overall mark and the fifth overall pick slot in the draft. After one more year of the Wilson experience, the Broncos moved on, taking on an $89 million cap hit to do so.
Fittingly, it was both the Broncos and Wilson (with the Steelers) who showed the Jets that they made the same fundamental mistake. They thought they could import a quarterback, paper over some roster holes with veterans, and buy a Super Bowl. After all, the Buccaneers and Rams did it.
This is the fallacy of trying to take shortcuts. Of course, it will work sometimes. If it never worked before, it would be less tempting to try. But the Jets should have known better from the Brett Favre experience with a team that was perhaps more talented on paper than this one.
Were the Jets wrong to think they were a quarterback away? Based on their 2022 performance, perhaps not. It seemed like Zach Wilson was the root of all their problems. A closer look would have indicated that the offensive line and receiving weapons were nowhere close to par.
More fundamentally, though, acquiring Aaron Rodgers meant the Jets were going all-in on a very short window of possible success. In that sense, it was far more like the Buccaneers’ risk with Tom Brady than the Rams’ with Matthew Stafford. Brady was 43, while Stafford was 32 and could conceivably still be a strong starting point if the Rams had to rebuild after their 2021 gamble.
The Jets put all of their eggs into the Aaron Rodgers basket. It was Rodgers or bust, and they didn’t even know whether Rodgers still had MVP-level play in him. When it went bust in 2023, they did everything possible for it to work the second time around, but with the even more tenuous state of Rodgers’ health. Brady was not coming off a torn Achilles.
The chances of winning it all in any given year in the NFL are slim. Of the 29 franchises that have been in the league for at least 30 years, 10 have never won a Super Bowl. Even the Kansas City Chiefs’ current odds to win the Super Bowl are +400, an implied probability of 20% — for the back-to-back champions who stand at 6-0.
All things being equal, the chance of any team winning the Super Bowl in a given season is 3.125%.
So while going all-in seemed like the only thing the Jets could do, it was also an extremely unlikely proposition. It was far more likely than not that the Jets would be left not only disappointed but in dire straits moving forward.
Of course, it would be hard to predict this level of futility. The (Joe Flacco and) Zach Wilson-led teams of the last two seasons were 5-2 and 4-3, respectively, after seven games. But the chances of going all the way were minuscule.
After Derek Carr signed with the Saints in the 2023 offseason, I wrote an article describing how the Jets signaled their all-in mindset by pursuing Rodgers instead of Carr. I discussed the pros and cons of trying to be competitive with a lower ceiling or going all-in on a short window of success. Signing Carr would have felt like the former, while trading for Rodgers was certainly the latter.
With the way Carr has fared in New Orleans so far, it’s fair to question whether the Jets would have been any better off with him. Still, getting Rodgers came with one goal in mind, and one goal only: to win a Super Bowl.
The Jets kept saying it in the 2023 offseason because it was true. If they merely wanted a chance to end their playoff drought, signing Carr would have given them more bites at the apple with less risk, at least in theory.
The Jets cast their chips into the middle of the table, and, barring a miracle, it failed. Maybe failing in this spectacular fashion was unexpected, but it doesn’t change the reality all that much.
Regardless, the Jets knew that if they failed, their future would be very bleak. They mortgaged much of their salary cap space and draft capital to build this team. If Rodgers retires next season or the Jets do not exercise his option bonus, he will have a $49 million dead cap value. If he does play one more season with the Jets, he’ll have a $63 million dead cap hit in 2026.
There are some cap machinations the Jets can perform to lessen these hits, and they also may renegotiate with Rodgers to recoup some of his signing bonus if he retires. Still, the Jets’ future is in very hot water.
Honestly, it is hard to blame Joe Douglas or even Woody Johnson (if it was at his impetus) for pursuing Rodgers. Douglas’ failure came earlier with Zach Wilson. The temptation to go all-in with a roster seemingly teeming with talent was understandable.
The more fundamental issues were in the Jets’ foundation, starting with their coaching. Going all-in with Sean McVay or even Bruce Arians as the head coach is very different than when Robert Saleh (and now Jeff Ulbrich) is at the helm.
The foundation of any NFL team is its coach and quarterback. The organizations that sustain success almost always have that strong core. Even if Rodgers was who they thought they were getting, they would have been held back by their coaching.
That was another shortcut the Jets tried to take. Rather than trying to strengthen their leadership along with the quarterback, they relied on the quarterback to cure all ills. Woody Johnson tried to rectify that issue by firing Saleh after Week 5, but there was no real chance to get a different voice in the building.
There are many, many reasons this Jets team is playing so poorly. But those are beside the greater point — that the team mortgaged its future for an incredible risk that is, somewhat predictably, not working out.
Yes, some of this is revisionist history on my part. I was all-in on this team this year, predicting they would win the Super Bowl. I thought Joe Douglas did an incredible job building a contender. But I forgot the bigger picture. I thought the one magical season would happen and then justify the futility to follow.
Instead, the Jets are left with a season going up in smoke and little hope for the future. For a team and fan base ravaged by the hard knocks of life, this one may be the worst yet.
