To believe or not to believe? That is the question.
Many New York Jets fans easily lean toward the latter in most situations. When your favorite football team has missed the playoffs 15 years in a row and failed to reach the sport’s championship game in 57 straight seasons, not believing is a pretty safe bet, and a healthy way to avoid being let down.
Every Jets fan, though, is desperate to finally believe in something. No matter how times their belief has been crumbled up and tossed into the Gray Sea (aka, the MetLife Stadium parking lot) to be forgotten about like another empty beer can, they keep coming back for more, eager to cling to any sliver of hope.
In Week 1 of the 2026 season, the Jets gave their optimistic fans one of those slivers of hope. They delivered one of the NFL’s most dominant performances of the opening week, smacking the Tennessee Titans badly enough to the point that New York fans were enjoying their most joyous post-Week 1 afterglow since 2018.
Something felt… different about this team. It was hard to explain, and even harder to justify considering the quality of the opponent (led by a head coach who Jets fans laughed out of town just two years ago), but you could feel it, even if fans were afraid to buy in just yet. There was cautious optimism heading into the home-opening “White Out” at MetLife Stadium.
Fast forward 50 minutes into Week 2, and that feeling persisted. The Jets were in complete control against the Green Bay Packers, a franchise on the opposite end of the respectability spectrum. The white towels were waving frantically for a white-hot football team, and the franchise’s first 2-0 start in 11 years was on the horizon. Things were about to get real.
Then… poof.
The other shoe dropped, as Jets fans always fear it will when the team manages to get their hopes up. In a matter of eight minutes, the Jets allowed the Packers to tie the game, largely through their own self-inflicted coaching blunders, and Green Bay went on to win in overtime.
“Same Old Jets.” Back to reality.
But… even after a collapse like that… are these really the Same Old Jets?
It’s easy to categorize every Jets defeat as an “SOJ” loss. However, it’s important to realize that every NFL loss carries emotional weight for fans and will generate some form of criticism from both the fan base and the media.
There are essentially two types of losses: Either the team gets blown off the field, and they get criticized for being “heartless” and “no-showing”, or they lose a close, winnable game, and they get criticized for “blowing it” or “choking”. Either way… “Same Old Jets.”
Both types of losses hurt, albeit in significantly different ways. Some might argue that a close loss, especially one where the team held a lead, hurts more.
But they aren’t remotely the same as it pertains to projecting a team’s outlook moving forward.
So, as we try to understand exactly who the 2026 Jets are, we shouldn’t be hung up on quantifying precisely how “Jetsy” their most recent loss was. We should be evaluating their performance in totality over the first two games of the season.
Because, after all, sure, there were “Jetsy” aspects to this defeat. But the biggest reason why it felt so “Jetsy” is that the Jets thoroughly outplayed Green Bay for the most part, and should have won based on how well they performed. They deserve credit for that aspect, even if they failed to finish it off due to a handful of high-leverage blunders.
After 110 minutes of football, the Jets were outscoring their opponents 40-17 this season, with seven of the opposing points coming in garbage time. What happened in the ensuing 10-plus minutes matters, of course, but it shouldn’t erase the body of work that New York has accumulated for the majority of this short season so far.
That’s what leaves Jets fans in such a puzzling spot. They are stuck between trusting the highly efficient play that New York has displayed throughout most of the first two games, and allowing the familiar pessimism of the fourth-quarter collapse to consume their budding dreams.
If you look at team-efficiency metrics through Week 2, the Jets are near the top of many lists:
- 3rd in total yards differential (+258)
- 5th in total first downs differential (+13)
- 5th in turnover differential (+2)
- 6th in total DVOA (40.2%)
- 7th in net EPA per play (0.155)
New York beat the doors off Tennessee in Week 1. There is no disputing the quality of that win, although the strength of the opponent is debatable (it’s worth noting that the Eagles had far more trouble with the Titans in Week 2). The Jets outgained the Titans by 172 yards, had eight more first downs, won the turnover battle 1-0, and held possession for over 17 more minutes.
In Week 2, New York comfortably outplayed Green Bay as well, even if it wasn’t quite as one-sided as Week 1. The Jets out-gained the Packers by 86 yards, had five more first downs, won the turnover battle 1-0, went 8 for 19 on third down compared to Green Bay’s 1 for 9, and won the possession battle by over 10 minutes.
For the most part, the Jets have been one of the NFL’s strongest football teams in terms of their net down-to-down efficiency. The defense has been elite, and the offense has been solid.
They just made all of the right high-leverage mistakes in Week 2 to ensure that their advantage in efficiency did not translate to the scoreboard (precisely the area where coaching comes in), costing them the 2-0 record that their metrics suggest they should have.
Therein lies the question that Jets fans are faced with.
Should fans lean toward optimism driven by the team’s down-to-down efficiency in totality over eight-plus quarters? Or should they lean toward pessimism driven by the team’s self-inflicted meltdown against Green Bay?
Why to lean optimistic
From a cumulative efficiency standpoint, teams that start as strongly as this year’s Jets tend to enjoy successful seasons.
The 2026 Jets are the 15th team over the last 10 seasons to have a total yardage margin of at least +250 and a turnover margin of at least +2 through the first two games. The Kansas City Chiefs have also done it this year, meaning 13 teams had done it from 2017-25. Here are those teams:
- 2025 Bills: 12-5 final record
- 2025 Colts: 8-9
- 2024 Saints: 5-12
- 2023 Cowboys: 12-5
- 2022 Bills: 13-3
- 2022 Eagles: 14-3 (Lost Super Bowl)
- 2022 49ers: 13-4 (Lost Super Bowl)
- 2021 Broncos: 7-10
- 2020 Packers: 13-3 (Lost NFC championship)
- 2019 Ravens: 14-2
- 2019 Patriots: 12-4 (Won Super Bowl)
- 2018 Rams: 13-3 (Lost NFC championship)
- 2018 Redskins: 7-9
That’s an average final win total of 11.0, with nine of 13 teams both making the playoffs and winning at least 12 games. Five of 13 teams made it to at least the conference championship round.
All but one of the 13 teams won at least seven games, which would eclipse the Jets’ 5.5 over-under in 2026.
Of course, many of those teams had elite quarterbacks and/or coaches, which makes it likelier that the Jets lean toward teams like the 2025 Colts or 2021 Broncos. Still, the list puts into perspective how well the Jets have been playing through two games, in terms of how they are moving the ball and protecting it relative to their opponents.
It’s worth noting that, of those 15 teams, only three failed to start 2-0: this year’s Jets, the 2022 49ers, and the 2018 Redskins, who all started 1-1.
The 2022 Niners actually stumbled out to a 3-4 start before winning their last 10 games and eventually reaching the Super Bowl. The 2018 Redskins got off to a 6-3 start before Alex Smith’s injury caused them to finish 7-9.
The bottom line is that the Jets have been playing some fantastic football so far. What they must figure out how to do is ensure that their quality of play translates more directly to the scoreboard.
The last 10 minutes against Green Bay highlighted this issue, but it was already on display in Week 1. It just didn’t get as much attention because the Jets won comfortably regardless.
Even against the Titans, the 23-10 final score did not fully encapsulate how much better the Jets were throughout the game. New York left plenty of points on the board due to self-inflicted wounds in crucial spots, be it through a bad snap, penalty, clock mismanagement, or a missed kick.
The Jets consistently moved the ball, but in high-leverage spots with points in the balance, they tended to beat themselves, turning 7s into 3s and 3s into 0s. That’s how what felt like a 33-10 game became a 23-10 game.
New York was so much better than Tennessee that it didn’t matter, but they weren’t quite better enough than Green Bay to get away with it the second time around.
At the end of the day, football is about who scores more points, not who gets more yards or has a better net-adjusted-relative EPA per play divided by the radius of the sun².
If the Jets cannot figure out how to turn their efficiency advantages into a congruent advantage on the scoreboard, they will not win as many games as a team with their metrics “should”.
But outplaying your opponent at moving and protecting the ball is precisely what puts you in a position to create that advantage on the scoreboard. That’s the baseline of football, and the Jets are executing it at a high level so far. The next (and most critical) step is finishing things off in high-leverage spots, particularly by not beating themselves with sloppy blunders or goofy coaching.
Can Jets fans trust that the team will do that, though?
Your team. Your decisions.
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Why to lean pessimistic
What happened at the end of the Green Bay game cannot be brushed aside. That’s because it was hardly a fluke. It validated the most glaring concern that fans had coming into the season: the coaching staff.
Aaron Glenn’s game management in his first season as a head coach was atrocious. There is no other way to describe it. His decisions (or lack thereof) left television commentators speechless.
His first-year game management was grounds for a one-and-done firing, but the Jets chose to run it back. To justify the Jets’ faith in him, the biggest area of improvement for Glenn had to be his game management.
The thing is, Glenn could not prove he had progressed in that area through press conference quotes, staff changes, roster changes, or feisty practices. It could only be proven once the regular season arrived. So, the Jets and their fans had to sit there for eight-plus months wondering whether their head coach could be trusted to make basic game-management decisions with a crucial game on the line.
There was nothing Glenn could do to convince them that he had grown in that area until the moment arrived.
That moment finally arrived on Sunday. And Glenn blew it—in grand fashion. His decisions against the Packers were right on par with last year’s London fiasco.
This is not to say that Glenn has been a complete failure in 2026. He deserves credit for the team’s overall improved play, while the decision to take over defensive play-calling is paying clear dividends so far. His impact on that side of the ball is obvious.
But Glenn is the head coach, not the defensive coordinator. And if you can’t trust your head coach to make basic game-management decisions, how can you trust that your team will ever properly translate its performance to the scoreboard, no matter how efficient they are?
This extends past Glenn and down to his second offensive coordinator hire, Frank Reich.
There were plenty of concerns about the Reich hire from the beginning. He is a 64-year-old coach who had been out of the NFL for two seasons and was fired in-season during each of his last two campaigns. His last successful NFL season was in 2021.
Like Glenn, Reich has done plenty of good so far. His personnel usage has been creative and modernized, squashing concerns about whether he might have outdated philosophies. The offense has generally been more efficient than most people expected.
However, Reich, too, validated concerns about his reliability in Week 2. His play-calling choices in crucial spots were often puzzling, highlighted by his back-to-back inside runs on a late fourth quarter sequence from third-and-2 with the score tied.
The Jets had been struggling to run inside all game, while their passing game was starting to hum, and even the outside run game had started to work. But Reich hammered two predictable inside runs with questionable designs (running out of shotgun on fourth-and-1), the Jets got stuffed, and they blew their advantage.
Reich also displayed questionable target distribution against the Packers, including Garrett Wilson having one more target than Isaiah Williams and Jeremy Ruckert having as many receptions as Kenyon Sadiq and Mason Taylor combined.
It’s somewhat of a catch-22. Glenn and Reich deserve credit for being the play-callers of two units that have combined to yield the third-best yardage differential in football thus far, along with top-seven rankings in more advanced efficiency metrics like DVOA and net EPA per play. However, their decision-making in crucial spots is directly responsible for why that efficiency has not translated to larger margins on the scoreboard.
The players shouldn’t be let off the hook, though. New York can’t have blown blocks, holding calls, bad snaps, and botched snaps in opponent territory with points on the line. In some ways, it’s just on the players to execute better when it matters most.
Simply put, everyone in green and white has to be more prepared to execute in the most pivotal moments.
The reality?
Most likely, the reality for this Jets team will lie somewhere in the middle. They seem too good to blow every game like they did against Green Bay, but for now, they are too unreliable in critical areas to be counted on to finish off close games at the consistency of an elite team.
Looking back to that list of teams with similar two-game starts over the last 10 years, it seems unlikely that the Jets will join the elite teams of that list, such as the 2022 Eagles or the multiple Josh Allen-led Bills teams. They probably don’t have the quarterback play, coaching, and overall roster firepower for that type of season.
At the very least, though, their start probably gives them a much higher floor than most unbiased analysts expected.
The Jets’ over-under was 5.5 wins. Based on how well they have played from down to down so far, it would be hard for them to win fewer than seven games, even if their talent and coaching limitations continue to cost them wins in big spots. At this rate, there will be plenty of games like Week 1, where the Jets outplay a bad team significantly enough to come out victorious even if they kick their own butts a few too many times.
We’re only two games in, so a lot can change. Maybe the first 110 minutes were the best the Jets will look all year, and another lowly season is in store. Maybe Aaron Glenn will take a crash course on game management from Bill Parcells this week, never make another mistake, and lead the Jets to a 15-0 finish as they continue outgaining opponents by over 120 yards per game.
For now, Jets fans are stuck in wait-and-see mode after Sunday’s collapse. If the Jets had finished off that victory, even if it came after they blew the 10-point lead, optimism would be through the roof. New York would have elite metrics with an undefeated record to back it up. They could be trusted as a team that is not only firing on all cylinders, but seems to know how to win.
Instead, the Jets currently look like one of the NFL’s most difficult teams to project. In a way, they are playing some of the best football in the league. But can they play winning football? At least at a consistent enough basis to push for a wild card spot and end their 15-year playoff drought?
To answer those questions with a “yes”, they will have to improve their fortitude in high-leverage spots. Time will tell whether a team led by Aaron Glenn, Frank Reich, and Geno Smith can pull that off, but Jets fans should at least take solace in the team’s excellent team-wide efficiency metrics through two games.
Those numbers are the quantification of “a team that competes every week”, which is all that many fans asked for this year. Well, this is what it looks like.
Sometimes, it’s going to result in crushing losses like the one we saw against Green Bay, but the heartbreak is precisely what makes it a competitive loss instead of a lifeless blowout loss. As much as it hurts, the silver lining is that it yields the baseline of a team that will indeed compete every single week.
What will determine whether the Jets can translate that weekly competitiveness to a serious playoff pursuit is whether they can stop shooting themselves in the foot when points are on the line.
