With a few exceptions, most NFL teams see their performances fluctuate wildly from year to year. A down-and-out 4-win team can transform into a 12-win NFC championship participant overnight, while a 12-win team that reached overtime in the Super Bowl can instantly drop to a six-win afterthought.
There are plenty of reasons for the NFL’s volatility. One of the biggest?
The volatility of individual players.
Most NFL players experience plenty of variability in their individual performance. The year-to-year consistency that may be standard in other sports is not the case in this particular league. Players who can sustain their performance on a yearly basis are exceptions.
That is why it is always important to look for bounce-back candidates (and fall-off candidates) when projecting an NFL team’s outlook for the upcoming season.
If every player simply sustained their performance from the previous year, then we would see the same outcomes every season. That is not the case. Players who were surprisingly great last year will crumble, and players who fell short of expectations will bounce back. We shouldn’t be surprised by these fluctuations – we should expect them.
On that note, fans and analysts of the New York Jets would be wise to get out in front of the positive swings that will occur for Aaron Glenn’s squad in 2025.
One player in particular is due to for a major uptick in performance next year, and he’s someone who (weirdly) has plenty of haters who do not want to see him succeed: Sauce Gardner.
Sauce Gardner is likely to bounce back
After kicking off his career with back-to-back first-team All-Pro nods – something no cornerback had ever done before – you would think that Sauce Gardner bought himself some leeway for one down year. That is not the case.
Gardner was constantly chastised by fans and media members for his performance in the 2024 season. While it is true that he was not as impactful as he was in 2022-23, you would think that Gardner turned into a slice of burnt toast the way that some people talk about him. The truth is that Gardner was “good, not great,” rather than “bad.”
Across 490 coverage snaps, Gardner allowed 25 receptions on 47 targets for 391 yards, one touchdown, and one interception (per PFF). He ranked in the 84th percentile among qualified cornerbacks with 0.8 yards allowed per cover snap, while his 79.3 passer rating allowed ranked in the 83rd percentile.
For most cornerbacks, this would be a career year, garnering well-deserved applause. But Gardner set the bar so high that, for people who became accustomed to seeing him look untouchable, it felt like he was struggling.
While Gardner ranked in the top-16% among qualified corners in those two key categories, they were career-lows for him. Across his first two seasons, he allowed 0.5 yards per cover snap and a 63.0 passer rating (versus 0.8 and 79.3 in 2024). This means that, compared to his first two seasons, Gardner allowed 60% more yards per cover snap and a passer rating that was 26% higher.
Yet, even with a decline of that degree, he was still better than four out of every five corners.
This means that, with regression to the mean, Gardner is due to ascend back into the top tier of NFL cornerbacks. Even if he lands halfway between his 2024 performance and his first two seasons, Gardner would be one of the best corners in football.
But there is a good chance Gardner will bounce all the way back to his 2022-23 peak, when he was the NFL’s CB1 in back-to-back years. When digging deeper into his 2024 season, we can see some signs that a return to his previous norms is on the horizon.
The reality is that Gardner’s coverage was just as tight in 2024 as it was in the past. His forced incompletion rate of 25.5% led the position (percentage of targets recording a pass breakup or interception), while his tight-window throw rate of 35.3% ranked fourth-best (percentage of targets with less than one yard of separation from the defender). Denzel Ward was the only other cornerback ranked top-five in both categories.
In terms of outcome-based stats (such as yards allowed), cornerback is one of the most erratic positions in football. This is mostly because a player’s season-long numbers can change significantly based on 50-50 outcomes from a handful of plays, even if they didn’t perform poorly on those plays.
Gardner was the victim of some plays like this in 2024, most notably this fluky 40-yard touchdown against Tennessee. This was his longest allowed reception of the year, and his only touchdown allowed, and yet, he actually covered the play extremely well. Chuck Clark was just slow to get over and help, and even so, the ball miraculously slipped through Gardner’s tight coverage and right into Calvin Ridley’s arms.
Gardner certainly needs to improve his tackling (career-high 17.5% missed tackle rate) and get his penalties back down (career-high 10 penalties after committing 10 over his first two seasons). Those are fair criticisms of his 2024 season, and Gardner must put in the work to fix those holes in his game. They won’t fix themselves naturally.
In terms of his coverage, though, there seems to be a good chance that Gardner will bounce back to All-Pro status in 2025. The extent of his 2024 drop-off is greatly exaggerated by critics, and the drop-off that did happen was not an indicator of a legitimate long-term drop in his ability.
An all-time-great young player, Gardner is immensely over-scrutinized for some reason that is difficult to pinpoint. Fans of other teams diminish his accomplishments and chalk it up to large-market favoritism. A small segment of Jets fans view him as dispensable. Media members overlook him in favor of players with gaudier box-score stats.
Why Gardner has fallen victim to this level of scrutiny is a phenomenon that requires a whole different discussion. For now, though, rest assured: It is very likely he will be back at the top of the All-Pro polls in 2025, and his critics will have a rough time sleeping with themselves.
It is no secret that Sauce sees every ounce criticism thrown his way, and you can bet that if he returns to his peak form in 2025, he is going to pull out the receipts. His old coach would have loved it. Will Aaron Glenn?
Considering Glenn’s promise to “move in silence,” he might not take to Gardner’s receipt-pulling as fondly as Robert Saleh might have. But when Gardner gets back to yielding half a yard per cover snap, Glenn probably won’t mind what he types on X.
