The New York Jets’ exodus from Thanksgiving Day football has reached its 12th consecutive season. New York has been barred from playing on the holiday since its listless performance against the Patriots in 2012.
Jets fans are likely thankful they will be spared from watching their team on this wonderful holiday. Today, they can fall asleep at 1 p.m. as a result of eating turkey instead of watching the Jets’ offense.
While it will be a peaceful Jets-free Thanksgiving for the Gotham Green faithful, there are still some fascinating Jets-related storylines to watch out for during today’s games.
Bears @ Lions (12:30 p.m. ET): Detroit’s Potential Coaching Candidates
With the Lions becoming an absolute juggernaut, teams around the NFL will be aggressively attempting to poach from their coaching staff. One of those teams will likely be the Jets.
There is a good chance that multiple coaches wearing Honolulu Blue at Ford Field today will eventually find themselves sitting across from Woody Johnson in January. The hottest names on Detroit’s staff are offensive coordinator Ben Johnson and defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn.
Johnson has Detroit ranked first in points per game, marking his third consecutive top-five scoring season since he became the team’s OC in 2022. Glenn, an iconic Jets cornerback who spent nine seasons with the team and made two Pro Bowls, has Detroit’s defense allowing the second-fewest points per game. It is a remarkable display of perseverance after the unit lost its best player, Aidan Hutchinson, just five games into the year.
Lions passing game coordinator Taylor Engstrand is another dark-horse head coaching candidate to keep an eye on. Even if he doesn’t make the leap to HC, Engstrand could also leave Detroit to seek a promotion to an OC role if Johnson remains the Lions’ OC, which is not out of the question since Johnson has been highly selective about becoming a head coach over the last two cycles.
There is a chance the 2025 Jets could be modeled after the culture in Detroit, similar to how the 2021 Jets attempted to mimic the 49ers’ culture with Robert Saleh, Mike LaFleur, and various other former 49ers coaches. So, keep a close eye on the inner workings of the Lions today. This could be the model New York attempts to follow next year.
Even if the Jets do not hire a former Lions coach, every downtrodden organization in the NFL should be analyzing Dan Campbell’s team for tips on how to take a star-crossed franchise and turn it into a powerhouse.
Giants at Cowboys (4:30 p.m. ET): Crucial for draft position
Just one game ahead of the worst record in the NFL, the Jets have a chance to climb quite high in the draft order if they do not turn things around post-bye week. In addition to their own losses, the Jets would need some wins from their fellow laughingstocks if they want to keep climbing. One of those laughingstocks will take the field at 4:30 today (technically two, but only one of them is ahead of the Jets in the draft order).
Not every Jets fan cares about the team’s draft position, but if you are one of the fans who does care, this afternoon’s game is a big one.
The 2-9 Giants currently possess the second overall pick in the 2025 NFL draft, but the Jets, who sit at 3-8, can pass the Giants in the order by the end of this week. The first tiebreaker for the draft order is strength-of-schedule (the team with the weaker SOS gets the higher pick), and the Jets currently have a lower SOS than the Giants (.505 to .529). If the Giants win and the Jets lose, the Jets would leapfrog them in the draft order if their SOS advantage holds. How high they’d go depends on how other teams atop the board perform this week.
It is tough to find reasons to care about this game between two down-in-the-dumps NFC East rivals who are deep into their QB depth charts. Why not add some stakes by rooting for a result that benefits the Jets’ future and hurts the Giants’ future?
Dolphins at Packers (8:20 p.m. ET): Rooting against the Dolphins
The only thing that feels as good as your favorite team’s glory is a rival team’s misery.
As a Jets fan, you can never resist the opportunity to watch the Dolphins lose. Despite the Bills’ resurgence in the 2020s and the Patriots’ dominance throughout the 2000s and 2010s, many Jets fans still contend that the Dolphins are the AFC East rival they dislike the most.
From Dan Marino’s fake spike to Tim Boyle’s Fail Mary, the Jets have some miserable late-November memories against the Dolphins. Watching Miami falter under the national spotlight would be glorious for Jets fans who need something to smile about.
The Dolphins have won three consecutive games and find themselves at 5-6, just 1.5 games back of the seventh-seeded Broncos (7-5). If they keep surging, they could have a chance to push for a playoff spot and get into the dance with momentum.
However, the Dolphins’ greatest enemy lies in front of them, and it’s not the Packers: it’s the holiday season.
Miami has famously struggled in late-season road games under head coach Mike McDaniel. Since 2022, the Dolphins are 1-6 in road games from Week 13 onward (including the playoffs), compared to their 8-8 record in road games through Week 12.
The forecast is calling for a high of 27 degrees in Green Bay tonight. That’s toasty for Wisconsinites, but it’ll be a stiff challenge for the high-flying offense from South Florida.
In addition, former Jets head coach Robert Saleh, who is now an assistant with the Packers (in what Matt LaFleur called a “fluid” role), will try to provide his team with some insight, as he has plenty of experience facing McDaniel’s Dolphins. McDaniel had Saleh’s number, though, going 3-1 across four meetings from 2022-23. In the Jets’ only win, Miami was down to its third-string quarterback, Skylar Thompson.
Tonight will also provide Jets fans with an idea of what the end of New York’s season will look like. Two of the Jets’ final five games are against the Dolphins, starting with a Week 14 trip to Florida. The Jets have not won at Hard Rock Stadium since December 28, 2014, when Geno Smith threw for a perfect passer rating.
Jets fans get a chance to kick back and relax today. That’s enough to be thankful for on its own, but this day could go down as something more memorable than that. In the future, Jets fans might look back on this Thanksgiving and remember that they got to watch their future head coach, see the Jets rise in the draft order to secure a franchise quarterback, see the Giants again squander a chance to get a franchise quarterback, and watch the Dolphins lose. That would be quite the feast.
