Is this New York Jets team closer to ‘bad’ or ‘average’?

While wins and losses are ultimately the only stat that matters for any sports team, it is often more useful to analyze underlying metrics to predict future wins and losses than to use the team’s win-loss record itself.

In a vacuum, a 2-4 team with a -10 point differential against a .571 strength-of-schedule should be considered likely to win more games moving forward than a 2-4 team with a -52 point differential against a .500 strength-of-schedule.

Six weeks into the 2026 season, one of those teams is the Arizona Cardinals, and the other is the New York Jets.

Yep, you guessed it: The Jets are the team that has been outscored by just 10 points against a fairly tough schedule. Arizona has the same number of wins, but has been outscored by six more touchdowns against a weaker slate of opponents.

Wins and losses are the end results, but there is a lot more to learn about a football team when looking at the process behind those results. If you look at the entire season in totality as one big game, it is much more informative about the quality of a team than their win-loss record.

So, exactly how good are the New York Jets after about one-third of the 2026 season?

The New York Jets are…

Let’s take a look at where the Jets rank in a few all-encompassing measures of performance:

• Point differential: -10 (20th)
• Simple Rating System: 0.0 (19th)
• DVOA: -6.6% (20th)

In terms of raw point differential, New York’s -10 mark ranks 20th in the league. Among the 14 teams with a losing record, the Jets rank fourth-best, trailing the Texans (+1), Rams (-3), and Cowboys (-8), suggesting that New York may be among the sub-.500 teams with the best turnaround potential.

“Simple Rating System” is a metric from Pro Football Reference that adjusts a team’s average point differential based on its strength of schedule (as measured by their opponents’ SRS ratings, not their win-loss record). Since the Jets’ schedule thus far has been slightly more difficult than average, their -1.7 average point differential receives a positive adjustment, bringing them to an overall rating of 0.0: perfectly average. It places them 19th in the league.

“DVOA”, short for “defense-adjusted value over average”, is an all-encompassing efficiency metric from FTN Fantasy (previously Football Outsiders) that measures a team’s efficiency compared to expectations on every play, accounting for variables like down, distance, field position, time, score, and opponent quality. The Jets’ -6.6% rating implies they are about 6.6% less efficient than the average NFL team on any given play (combining offense, defense, and special teams), which ranks 20th.

Across the board, the Jets are looking like a slightly below-average team at the moment. They cannot quite be considered average, but they also are comfortably above “awful”. Make of that what you will.

The main reason New York’s overall metrics look this way is that their losses have generally been close. Three of their four defeats were by one score, and even their biggest loss was by just 11 points (although the game was not as close as that score indicates). They also receive positive adjustments for strength-of-schedule in SRS and DVOA, given that five of their six games came against teams that currently have a winning record.

Given how large of a step forward it is from last year’s league-worst and historically abysmal performance, New York’s overall “mediocre” performance is all well and good; at the very least, it paints a rosier picture of the Jets’ outlook over the next 11 games than if they were getting blown out left and right. But until the Jets improve their execution in high-leverage spots, they will continue to lose close games.

More than 60% of NFL games this season have been decided by one score, so it isn’t necessarily an accomplishment to lose competitively; it’s the expectation. What separates contenders from bottom-feeders is the ability to execute consistently enough in big moments to win close games at a high rate.

So far in 2026, the Jets have very consistently come up small when it matters most, whether it’s fourth-and-short situations offensively, red zone offense, end-of-half clock management, or clutch defensive drives. At some point, the Jets can no longer be considered “close”, but instead, just flat-out bad at executing in the few game-tilting moments that separate close losses from wins.

For now, it’s early enough in the season to maintain some optimism that the Jets’ overall “mediocre, not terrible” play suggests that the team might have a run in them, especially with two home games coming up against a pair of teams on three-plus-game losing streaks. It’s certainly more plausible to expect a sudden turnaround from the Jets compared to many other sub-.500 teams, who seem more than a few tweaks away from turning their losses to wins.

As close as the Jets seem, though, it’s those final few inches that are the hardest to pick up for a team on this side of .500. From as early as their season opener (even though they won, coming against a 1-5 team), the Jets have failed time and time again to win that key yard to turn field goals to touchdowns and/or opponent touchdowns to field goals, so the reality might simply be that they aren’t built to pick up those final few inches, as currently constructed.

Eleven games remain for the Jets to prove they have not already shown their 2026 ceiling (competitive team that usually comes up short), and that changes can be made to consistently flip those last few plays that are separating them from wins.