Just four months ago, many predicted a serious playoff run and possible Super Bowl contention for the New York Jets.
Before midseason came around, it was obvious that this would not be the case. Even so, it was unfathomable that a team of this supposed talent would finish 5-12. Yet here we are, fresh off the Jets’ 14th consecutive futile effort to make the playoffs, wondering how we could have gotten it so wrong.
This season’s postmortem has been written repeatedly, starting from Week 7 or thereabouts. But now that the season is actually over, it’s worth looking back at the themes that caused the complete disaster we witnessed.
How did we get to where we are?
5. Woody Johnson
Placing blame on the Jets’ ownership for the season’s downfall does not require a single reference to an article in The Athletic (at least, one from the 2024 season).
It started after the 2022 season. The Jets fired offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur, a move that evidently came from ownership even as Robert Saleh fought to retain his best friend’s younger brother.
Jets X-Factor’s Robby Sabo warned at the time that if Johnson was, indeed, the impetus behind the firing, it was a terrible sign for the Jets’ organization. He wrote, “It’s more critical that this organization is willing to allow the Douglas-Saleh regime to succeed or fail on its own devices as opposed to choosing a scapegoat in the face of appeasing the mob.”
Although I supported moving on from LaFleur, myself, Sabo’s point was well-taken. The minute ownership starts interfering in football decisions, the actual decision-makers are undermined. I made that point when discussing behind-the-scenes reports following LaFleur’s eventual exit.
To take it a step further, though, if firing LaFleur showed that Johnson did not trust his football people, perhaps he should have moved on from Saleh and Joe Douglas right then. Either you trust your brain trust, or you don’t.
There hasn’t been much reporting about Johnson interfering during the 2023 season. But there were still signs before the season that ownership was pushing Douglas. In particular, the Aaron Rodgers trade had the hallmark of impatient ownership.
Although I was extremely critical of Douglas during his tenure with the Jets, impatience did not seem to be one of his flaws. He often played the cat-and-mouse game in negotiations. In fact, he did so with Odell Beckham Jr. that same offseason, refusing to kowtow to Beckham’s demands.
So why, then, did Douglas rush to trade for Rodgers before the draft when he was clearly bidding against himself? There was no other team interested in the 39-year-old quarterback. His contract was an albatross. The Jets could have easily waited out the Packers.
Instead, not only did the Jets trade for Rodgers before the draft, but they gave up a tremendous draft haul in doing so — a first-round pick swap, a second-round pick, and a conditional second-rounder. This was a disastrous counter to the laws of supply and demand. If there is little or no demand, the price goes down. Think about the conditional fourth-round pick the Jets gave up for Brett Favre.
There has been no reporting about this to my knowledge, but I have believed since the time of the trade that Johnson pushed Douglas to make the deal before the draft. It just did not make sense otherwise.
Then, after the Jets’ failed 2023 season, Johnson decided to throw Douglas and Saleh a mulligan. I did not agree with the move at the time, but perhaps if it was made in the spirit of appeasing Rodgers, it was understandable.
However, the fact that Johnson fired Saleh after five games clearly indicates that he had lost confidence in the head coach prior to the season. If he was going to keep Saleh on that short of a leash, he should have fired him after the 2023 season. Ditto for Douglas.
(As an aside, a different New York football owner just did the same thing. John Mara expressed his lack of confidence in general manager Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll while announcing he was giving them one more year.)
The reports from The Athletic, to whatever extent they are true, just serve to highlight how much Johnson did not trust Douglas. He vetoed the moves Douglas wanted to make and forced him to sign players he and Saleh did not want to.
Johnson sowed the seeds of the Jets’ 2024 dysfunction by not firing Douglas and Saleh beforehand.
4. The fallacy of guaranteed replication
In January 2023, Jets X-Factor’s Michael Nania wrote an article titled “The 2023 NY Jets and the fallacy of guaranteed replication.” He cautioned Jets fans against believing that the performance of one season would be replicated the following year.
Ironically, the concerns Nania expressed did not materialize in 2023. The Jets’ defense continued to be mostly healthy, Quinnen Williams’ ascension proved to be real, Breece Hall returned to strong play post-ACL tear, and Alijah Vera-Tucker played well before tearing his Achilles and looked well on his way to spurring the Jets’ running game once more.
However, Nania was not wrong; he was simply a year too early. In particular, his warning about the Jets’ defense was prescient. Fans assumed that after two consecutive years of high-level play, the Jets’ defense would continue to excel.
Aaron Schatz’s Adjusted Games Lost metric (which estimates each team’s number of games lost to injury when accounting for playing time) is yet to be released, but the Jets’ defense was certainly far less healthy in 2024 than the previous two seasons. Jermaine Johnson’s Week 2 Achilles tear, Sauce Gardner’s constant entrance and exit from the lineup, and C.J. Mosley’s season-long injury woes (more from a captaincy angle than a performance once, since Jamien Sherwood was solid) undoubtedly contributed to the Jets’ defensive regression.
However, injuries and Saleh’s firing may not come close to explaining the downfall. In reality, defensive performance varies wildly from year to year across the league.
In 2019, Five Thirty Eight’s Josh Hermsmeyer wrote an article titled “Why the NFL Can’t Rely on Defense.” He explained that a team’s defensive DVOA in one season predicted just 9.7% of its defensive DVOA the following season, compared to 18.9% for offensive DVOA.
Furthermore, before the season, many fans and prognosticators overlooked the heavy losses the Jets’ pass-rushing arsenal sustained. Javon Kinlaw’s chances to replace Quinton Jefferson’s production were suspect.
Haason Reddick and Will McDonald were expected to replace John Franklin-Myers and Bryce Huff, also leaving major questions at the position. And even though Jermaine Johnson had a strong 2023 season, was there any guarantee he would be able to build on it?
There was also the question of run defense, which Jets X-Factor was all over. Losing Franklin-Myers would undoubtedly take its toll, and replacing Al Woods with Leki Fotu seemed like a downgrade. We assumed that a presumably excellent offense and playing with leads would mask the issue.
The implosion of the Jets’ pass defense (from third in DVOA in 2023 to 21st in 2024) was highly unexpected. Perhaps it was just a Saleh thing, but it’s far more likely that the Jets fell victim to the year-to-year defensive variability.
Without keeping this in mind, the Jets’ team looked a lot stronger on paper before the season. Severe defensive regression was a possibility from Day 1.
3. Regression from key stars
The Jets’ issues went far deeper than any one player. However, a group of stars simultaneously took a step back in a way that did them no favors.
Breece Hall
Instead of ascending to become one of the league’s best backs, Breece Hall took a major step back in 2024. He was significantly below average in many advanced statistical categories (EPA per carry, success rate, first downs over expected, missed tackles forced rate) and below average in others (rush yards over expected, percentage of plays with positive rush yards over expected, yards after contact per attempt).
The worst part of Hall’s season is that his blocking was better than in the past. After a brutal start in which the Jets’ blocking generated 3.1 expected yards per carry over the first five weeks of the season, which would have been the lowest in the NFL Next Gen Stats era, they rebounded to post 4.7 xYPC over the rest of the season, ranking first.
Overall, the Jets provided 4.2 xYPC on Hall’s carries, which ranked 16th out of 38 backs. Yet Hall generated 0.0 RYOE per carry, giving him exactly 4.2 yards per carry. Meanwhile, in 2023, the Jets’ run-blocking gave him 3.8 xYPC (29th), but he had 0.7 RYOE per carry (5th), giving him 4.5 yards per carry.
Regression from Hall does not fully explain or excuse the poor offense as a whole, but it certainly contributed to the dysfunction.
Quinnen Williams
Quinnen Williams also took a step back in 2024. While he was still above average, his production was nowhere near the heights of the previous two seasons. Specifically, Williams’ production as a run defender plummeted.
Among 70 defensive tackles with at least 200 run defense snaps, Williams’ 57.5 PFF run defense grade ranked 33rd. While that might not sound so terrible, consider that he had a 90.4 run defense grade in 2023, leading all defensive tackles. His 57.5 mark in 2024 was the worst of his six-year career and only the second time he was below 72.0.
This was at least partially due to the fact that Williams’ impact plays in the run game decreased significantly. In 2023, he ranked fourth among defensive tackles with 35 run stops* and fifth with an 11.7% run stop rate. In 2024, he fell all the way to 16 run stops (T-37th) and a 6.2% run stop rate (43rd).
* PFF defines a run stop as a tackle that results in a failure for the offense: gaining fewer than 40% of required yards on first down, 50% on second down, and 100% on third and fourth down.
More than perhaps any other team, the Jets’ defense relied on Williams to keep their run defense stable. Their other defensive tackles all had PFF run defense grades of 43.0 or lower the year prior. They lost John Franklin-Myers, their key run-stuffer.
Although Williams was hardly the only reason the Jets’ run defense allowed the eighth-highest success rate in the NFL (43.7%), his lack of dominance in this area weakened their unit tremendously.
Williams still played pretty well overall as a pass rusher. His 12% pressure rate ranked fifth among defensive tackles, although it was closer to his 2022 rate (12.4%) than his 2023 peak (15.1%). He had 16 quarterback knockdowns in 2024 compared to 17 in 2023. He wasn’t quite as dominant as a pass rusher in 2024, but he was still very good.
Sauce Gardner
Sauce Gardner’s regression in 2024 is well-documented and grossly exaggerated. Gardner did not have a bad season as a cover corner. In fact, as Nania detailed, his “down” season is equivalent to many cornerbacks’ career year.
However, the fact that Gardner was not nearly as good as he had been in his first two seasons took a major toll on the Jets’ defense. Considering how poor their run defense was throughout the season, they needed their coverage to be elite to stay solid as a unit.
In particular, Gardner had the propensity to allow the big play, something he excelled at preventing in his first two seasons. Among 82 cornerbacks with at least 350 coverage snaps, Gardner’s 15.6 yards per reception was the second-worst and his 8.9 yards per target were the sixth-worst.
Consequently, Gardner allowed the eighth-worst EPA per target (0.39) despite posting a strong coverage success rate (56.9%, 17th) and having among the tightest coverage in the NFL (third-best in open rate, fifth-best in tight-window rate, and best in forced incompletion rate).
Gardner wasn’t bad in 2024. In fact, he was quite good in coverage. But “quite good” wasn’t good enough, particularly when considering the other holes in his game (run defense and tackling).
Garrett Wilson
Jets fans may not want to hear this, but Garrett Wilson wasn’t good enough, either. Regardless of how well Aaron Rodgers did or did not play in 2024 (more on that later), his performance was undoubtedly better than the Jets quarterbacks’ in 2023. Yet, Wilson’s underlying metrics were very similar to his 2023 marks.
Among 70 receivers with at least 60 targets, Wilson’s 7.2 yards per target ranked 57th. Sure, part of that could have been his relatively short average depth of target (9.4), which ranked 51st.
However, that excuse loses muster when considering that some of the receivers with a shorter ADOT included Puka Nacua, Chris Godwin, CeeDee Lamb, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Stefon Diggs, Ja’Marr Chase, and Jaxon Smith-Njigba — quite an honor roll.
Incredibly, Wilson’s 0.08 EPA per target ranked 57th despite his career-high seven touchdowns. In part, this was because five of Rodgers’ interceptions went in his direction. One can hardly forget Wilson’s horrendous drop that turned into an interception and swung the game decidedly in the Steelers’ favor.
Wilson also continued to be only slightly above average in YAC despite the fact that this is supposed to be his specialty. He averaged 4.4 YAC per reception, ranking 25th. It was not for lack of opportunity, either; the Jets tried to get Wilson open with screens and short passes, but he just didn’t do much with them. This despite leading all receivers with 25 missed tackles forced. It suggests that Wilson did a lot of dancing to make defenders miss, but didn’t create much yardage out of it.
Wilson’s frustration about Rodgers’ preference to feed the ball to Davante Adams may have been warranted (although his target rate was very similar from before Adams’ arrival if you exclude the 23-target Vikings game). However, considering his lack of production when Rodgers did throw him the football, Wilson had plenty of blame to shoulder in his own right. It’s not like he’s A.J. Brown complaining about a lack of targets.
There is a lot more to discuss with Wilson, much of which does not show up in the statistics. He improved his contested catch rate significantly (from 29.7% to 51.7%) but still struggled to make tough catches in key moments, outside of that one play of the year against Houston.
Wilson also continued his lack of technical refinement in route-running. Jets X-Factor’s Joe Blewett pointed this out as a weakness in Wilson’s game coming into the NFL. In his rookie year, he seemed to have progressed significantly, and he still has his moments where he makes cornerbacks look silly (particularly Jalen Ramsey).
However, there are also far more instances where Wilson bows his routes out to the sideline, decreasing the window for the quarterback to throw the ball or even taking himself out of the play altogether. He also does not threaten cornerbacks off the line with his releases, allowing them to easily stay in his hip pocket.
Blewett pointed this out in his review of Wilson’s 2023 season, and the issues persisted.
Wilson is still a good player, and perhaps he could be an excellent one with better quarterback play. But still, there is plenty in his own court for him to improve before blaming his passers for his lack of efficiency.
Again, the varying struggles of Hall, Gardner, Williams, and Wilson were not the primary reasons for the Jets’ season-long malaise, at least not individually. But collectively, having arguably the team’s four best players perform below standard (most significantly Hall) was undoubtedly a large contributor.
2. The struggles of aging veterans
The Jets relied on five key aging veterans to bolster the offensive side of the football: Aaron Rodgers, Mike Williams, Tyron Smith, Haason Reddick, and Morgan Moses. All four were key to fielding a top offense. The first three regressed significantly.
The fourth, Reddick, held out until the Jets’ season was all but over and then contributed nothing when he did play. The fifth, Moses, was good as a pass-blocker and not so good as a run-blocker, but his far bigger issue was his inability to stay healthy.
Aaron Rodgers
We’ve already had the debates about Rodgers. It seemed that Jets X-Factor wrote of little else over the final month of the season. It’s hard to find any consensus on his performance, although the fact that a poll by ESPN’s Rich Cimini showed that 66% of Jets fans do not want Rodgers back may indicate there is more consensus than the hallowed halls of X and other forums would have us believe.
However, this may be the least objectionable and most accurate statement about Rodgers: he was average at best. It is difficult (though not impossible, evidently) to argue that he was any better than the 15th-best quarterback in the NFL.
If you believe Rodgers was average, perhaps this was not regression. After all, that’s roughly where he fell out in 2022. (It is notable that Rodgers’ numbers this season were worse than in 2022 in virtually every metric, but I digress.) And 15th-best quarterback play should not lead to a 5-12 season. Even 20th-best quarterback play likely shouldn’t lead to that.
Most fair-minded individuals would not blame the Jets’ horrible season solely on Rodgers. Without the other parts of the team utterly falling apart around him (run game, defense, kicking game), this probably would have been a seven or eight-win team.
However, for the lofty goals the Jets set for themselves this season, Rodgers wasn’t good enough. They may have been able to make the playoffs in 2023 with the same level of play (although I would strongly dispute the idea that Rodgers could have performed at the same level behind that offensive line).
But in no universe would the 2024 version of Rodgers have led any Jets team of the last three seasons on a playoff run.
(Well, maybe in some universe if you’re Rex Ryan. But this is not 2010.)
Mike Williams
Williams may have caught the game-winning touchdown in his first game with the Steelers, but his overall numbers on the season tell a story beyond just his performance with the Jets. He finished the season with 21 catches on 34 targets for 298 yards and one touchdown.
Though the Jets’ acquisition of Davante Adams after six games rendered Williams obsolete before he was traded, the Jets sorely missed a legitimate No. 2 threat in those first six games. Defenses had no problem doubling Garrett Wilson, knowing Williams would not beat them.
The game-sealing interceptions thrown Williams’ way in back-to-back weeks likely weren’t entirely his fault, but he certainly deserved some blame for both. More importantly, they were plays that a team needs its No. 2 receiver to make or at least to break up.
Not having that second weapon rendered the Jets’ receiving corps as one-dimensional as it was in 2023. By the time the Jets acquired Adams, the season was already starting to spiral out of control.
Tyron Smith
This was the worst one of all, and one the Jets’ coaching staff would likely handle differently in hindsight. They expected elite play from Tyron Smith. Instead, Smith was downright bad.
Ironically, despite the fact that Smith’s struggles were evident on the TV screen, they are not as easy to access in the data. According to NGS, Smith had the ninth-best pressure rate (6.3%) among 70 tackles with at least 250 pass-blocking snaps. PFF was less sanguine, charting him at 41st. Nonetheless, 41st is below average but does not fully capture how badly Smith lost.
A little more digging unearths exactly what was on the screen — specifically, his performance in true pass sets. According to PFF, a true pass set “excludes plays with less than 4 rushers, play action, screens, short dropbacks, and times-to-throw under 2 seconds.”
In other words, a true pass set most closely identifies when a pass rusher needs to block for a reasonable period of time without help from the play call (although it still includes double teams and chips).
Per PFF, Smith’s 12.6% pressure rate in true pass sets ranked 61st out of 70 qualifiers. That in and of itself shows how poorly he played when Rodgers didn’t bail him out with a quick release or a screen. But even worse, Smith allowed a 6.67% knockdown rate (sack or hit) in true pass sets, the worst among all tackles.
That’s exactly what the world saw. Smith allowed Rodgers to be hit extremely often, often in the worst possible spots. It was alarmingly evident from the time Leonard Floyd (not Nick Bosa) ran right around him in Week 1.
The Jets’ pass-blocking as a whole held up in true pass sets (at least until Carter Warren and Max Mitchell joined the fray at the end of the season), but not Smith. He was supposed to be the anchor at left tackle who took on the opponent’s best pass rusher. Instead, he was the weakest link in the Jets’ pass protection, the one even lesser pass rushers could exploit.
By the time Olu Fashanu replaced Smith at left tackle in the middle of the Week 10 game against Arizona, the Jets were already well on their way to a 3-7 record. It was too little, too late.
Haason Reddick
Losing John Franklin-Myers only to have Reddick hold out for the first seven weeks of the season was a double whammy for the Jets’ defense. They lost their best run defender while also being unable to make up for the pass rush production that left in the offseason.
When Reddick did show up, he completely failed to produce. Specifically, he was supposed to be the sack artist, the player who didn’t just generate pressure but also produced game-altering plays. Instead, Reddick post just one sack. His 2.49% knockdown rate ranked 78th out of 86 edge defenders (min. 225 pass rush snaps).
I put the struggles of the aging veterans over the regression of the younger stars because of the importance of the quarterback position. But if you add the varying degrees of decreased production from all eight of those players, the reasons for the Jets’ poor season become increasingly clear.
1. Coaching, coaching, coaching
Every single Jets X-Factor writer predicted a playoff berth for the Jets this season. All but one thought they would win at least 11 games. The only voice of caution in the pack was Robby Sabo, who also predicted a playoff berth but believed that the Jets’ coaching would ultimately be their downfall.
Although even Sabo did not imagine how bad it would get, it’s hard to deny the stamp of poor coaching throughout the team. For example:
- The Jets had good run-blockers across the offensive line but played putridly earlier in the season. Throughout the year, there were evident schematic issues in the run game.
- The team somehow insisted on playing Micheal Clemons, perhaps the worst edge defender in modern Jets history, on 54% of their defensive snaps.
- The Jets’ run defense, always a weakness under Robert Saleh, fell apart schematically (from before Saleh was fired).
- The Jets’ desire to be a run-first, smash-mouth team led them to extreme predictability. (Beware, Jets fans who want Rex Ryan back.)
- On a separate but related note, the offense was straight from the 1970s prior to Nathaniel Hackett’s demotion. Todd Downing tried to improve it somewhat, but it didn’t stick.
- Penalties.
- Penalties.
- Penalties.
- See: the end of the Rams game.
- Outrageous clock mismanagement leading to a loss against the Patriots.
- Outrageous clock mismanagement that could have led to a loss against the Jaguars.
I do not subscribe to the idea that this team would have made a deep playoff run if not for bad coaching. Coaching matters in the NFL, certainly, but I don’t think it’s the difference between a 5-12 team and a serious playoff contender.
Nevertheless, it is likely still the No. 1 reason why the Jets’ season fell apart so quickly and definitively, and why a team supposedly with such talent finished with five victories.
