They say that men and women lie, but numbers don’t.
Whoever “they” is, they haven’t been subjected to people who still judge NFL cornerbacks using interception totals in the big 2025.
Or, people who still think “total offense” and “total defense” are the proper metrics for understanding how good an NFL team is on either side of the ball.
Don’t even get me started on completion percentage.
Without further ado, let’s break down five of the most misleading stats about the 0-7 New York Jets.
1. Will McDonald’s 2 sacks
Big things were expected from third-year edge rusher Will McDonald, who broke out to the tune of 10.5 sacks in his second season.
A glance at the box score suggests that McDonald is having an underwhelming season. Through seven games, he has only two sacks and five quarterback hits.
Despite those unimpressive numbers, McDonald has actually been quite solid in areas he can control. Unfortunately, outside factors have prevented him from converting his success into production.
According to Pro Football Focus, McDonald has a pass-rush grade of 85.3 in true pass set situations. This ranks 14th-best among the 80 edge rushers with at least 100 pass-rush snaps. McDonald ranks just behind Aidan Hutchinson (88.9) and Josh Hines-Allen (89.9).
True pass sets exclude screens, rollouts, quick passes, and other similar plays that prevent the pass rushers from having a “true” opportunity to engage in a one-on-one battle. By isolating a pass rusher’s performance on true pass sets, you get a better idea of how they are performing independent of surrounding factors.
WEEK 8 JETS FILM BREAKDOWN: What's really going wrong with the offenseThe issue for McDonald is that these true pass sets have been few and far between. He ranks just 59th among edge rushers with 59 reps in true pass sets.
McDonald’s dearth of true pass set opportunities is due to a few reasons.
First, the Jets don’t play McDonald very much in general. McDonald has been on the field for 59% of the Jets’ defensive plays. He often plays a similar snap count to Micheal Clemons.
Additionally, the Jets don’t face many passing plays because they spend so much time trailing. New York’s opponents throw just 28.9 pass attempts per game, ranking eighth-fewest.
Combine McDonald’s modest snap percentage with the Jets’ low volume of opposing pass attempts, and McDonald doesn’t play many pass-rush snaps at all, true pass set or not. He has logged 147 pass-rush snaps (21.0 per game), which ranks 47th at his position, not too much higher than his No. 59 ranking in true pass sets.
On top of all that, a relatively high percentage of McDonald’s pass-rush snaps are not true pass sets (hence why he ranks 12 spots higher in total pass-rush snaps). This is because the Jets’ pass rush has been limited by a struggling secondary that allows opponents to get the ball out fast. New York’s opponents average 2.54 seconds to throw, which ranks fifth-fastest.
McDonald is winning his battles fairly often. If the Jets want him to get more sacks, they need to give him more reps and buy him more time to get home.
2. Five one-score losses
With a quick glance at their final scores, it’s easy to craft the narrative of New York being a sneakily competitive team that isn’t as bad as its 0-7 record. Five of the Jets’ seven losses were by one score.
That factoid belies how poorly the Jets have actually played.
The best way to evaluate the quality of an NFL team is to judge their performance in totality. Basically, we should look at the entire season as one big game.
A good metric for this exercise is Simple Rating System (SRS), which adjusts average point differential for strength-of-schedule. The Jets’ SRS is -10.4, the worst mark in the NFL.
Yes, worse than the Titans, Dolphins, Saints, Raiders, or any other lowly NFL team you can think of.
This is due to the Jets’ weak schedule; based on SRS, they have played the fifth-easiest slate of games thus far. Their average point differential of -7.7 is actually not too horrendous, ranking 26th, but they have faced by far the weakest schedule among the seven teams being outscored by more than seven points per game.
Against their soft schedule, the Jets have suffered two blowout losses to non-top-10 SRS teams and three one-score losses to teams with negative SRS ratings. That is a formula for being the worst team in football.
Based on how the Jets have performed in totality, they would be expected to lose by 10.4 points on a neutral site against a perfectly average team.
That number is arguably kind to the Jets. SRS does not account for garbage time; it treats all points with equal value. The Jets, though, have scored a massive percentage of their points in garbage time. Seven of their 12 touchdowns came in the fourth quarter while trailing by multiple scores (with little-to-no chance of victory).
If we isolate the Jets’ offensive and defensive efficiency in situations where their win probability ranged from 10-90%, they are in their own stratosphere with the Titans as the two worst teams in football.
The Jets deserve every bit of their 0-7 record.
3. Jamien Sherwood’s 70 tackles
Tackles are one of the least useful stats for evaluating defensive players.
Getting a tackle doesn’t necessarily mean you made a positive contribution on the play. You can get a tackle after allowing a catch or after allowing a rusher to break loose for a big gain.
There are ways to positively impact a play without getting a tackle. If you consistently handle your responsibility in coverage, you shouldn’t get many tackles. If you are disciplined with your run fits, you should push plenty of tackles to your teammates rather than getting them yourself.
Overall, tackles are a bad stat. That’s why it doesn’t mean much that Jamien Sherwood is tied for third in the league with 70 tackles.
Sherwood is having a disappointing season after signing his three-year, $45 million contract. He’s doing fine against the run, but his film is littered with mistakes in coverage. Sherwood has a 40.3 coverage grade at Pro Football Focus, ranking seventh-worst among 68 qualified linebackers. That is an accurate representation of what he shows on film.
On just 29 throws in Sherwood’s direction (21st among LB), he has allowed 276 yards (seventh-most) and two touchdowns (sixth-most). He’s coughing up a 129.3 passer rating when targeted, the second-worst mark among linebackers to face at least 20 targets.
While Sherwood was also a tackle machine in his 2024 breakout season (fourth in the NFL with 158 total tackles), he didn’t earn his contract solely because of the tackles. He got paid because he backed up his on-ball production with quality efficiency in coverage.
In 2024, Sherwood ranked 14th out of 69 qualified linebackers with a 66.2 coverage grade at PFF. He gave up no touchdowns and yielded a 96.4 passer rating (16th-best). Across 17 games, he allowed 435 yards (25.6 per game), a vast difference from his 276 yards in seven games this season (39.4 per game).
Whether he makes 15 tackles per game or five, the Jets need Sherwood to cut the coverage mistakes out of his game.
4. Fifth-ranked 4.9 yards per rush attempt
The Jets’ run game seems pretty good from an efficiency standpoint. They rank fifth-best in the NFL with 4.9 yards per rush attempt.
However, this number is buoyed by scrambles from the quarterback position. Justin Fields and Tyrod Taylor have scrambled 30 times for 245 yards (8.2 yards per attempt), giving New York the second-most attempts and yards on scrambles behind only Kansas City.
On non-scramble rush attempts, the Jets tumble to 11th with 4.2 yards per attempt. It’s still a decent ranking, but the yardage belies their true efficiency; the Jets are just 26th in EPA (Expected Points Added) per attempt on designed rushes. Some chunk gains of yardage are ballooning the YPC mark, masking their poor down-to-down efficiency in the run game.
How has the Jets’ designed run game been this ineffective?
Well, let’s try to figure it out through process of elimination.
The Jets’ run blocking has been solid, according to most metrics. PFF has them 16th in team run-blocking grade (60.7) while ESPN has them ninth in run-block win rate (73%).
If the offensive line has been respectable, maybe it’s the ball carriers, then?
Not really; the Jets are 10th-best with 97 rushing yards over expected, per NFL Pro, which indicates their runners are doing a good job of making plays. Justin Fields and Breece Hall have both run solidly on their designed carries this season.
So, if it isn’t the offensive line or the ball carriers, we have a clear explanation for why the Jets are not running the ball efficiently.
It comes down to the fact that New York’s passing game is too atrocious for defenses to pay any mind to it. This allows them to focus all of their attention on the Jets’ run game. Defensive coordinators can stack the box, while individual players can play with an aggressive mentality since they are unlikely to be punished by the passing game for overpursuing toward the line of scrimmage.
Exacerbating the issue, though, is offensive coordinator Tanner Engstrand, who has played into the defense’s hands by being too predictable. According to this chart from Draft Sharks, the Jets have the league’s lowest pass rate over expected through Week 7.
This metric estimates how often teams choose to pass relative to league-average expectations after accounting for the context of the situation (score, time, down/distance, etc.). These contextual adjustments make it a much better method for understanding a team’s play-calling tendencies than simply looking at raw pass/run ratio, since those numbers are affected by the situation (i.e. bad teams will pass more often because they frequently trail, and good teams will run more often because they frequently lead).
New York has an almost identical run-heaviness to Engstrand’s old home, the Lions, but there’s a key difference: Detroit has the leverage of a quality passing game. The threat of Detroit’s dangerous play-action game allows their run game to stay efficient despite being used at a predictably high rate.
With the Jets’ passing game being unintimidating, they cannot afford to self-sabotage their run game through predictability. It’s a strange paradox: The Jets are much better at running than passing, so you’d think it makes sense to lean heavily toward running, but their running will be rendered ineffective if they don’t mix in enough passes to keep the defense honest, even if those passes aren’t very effective themselves.
As ineffective as the Jets’ passes may be, Engstrand must mix in more of them in unpredictable spots to keep the defense honest and open up space for the run game. If he keeps playing stubborn ground-and-pound football against defenses that aren’t afraid of getting beat over the top, the Jets will keep running into walls no matter how solid their blocking is or how many tackles their runners break.
5. Quinnen Williams’ 1 sack
Like Will McDonald, Quinnen Williams’ measly sack total sends the wrong message about how well he’s playing. In Year 7, Williams is having one of his best seasons.
Williams has indisputably been the best interior run defender in the NFL. His metrics in that phase are off the charts.
Not only does Williams lead defensive tackles with 21 run stops, but he has eight more than the third-ranked player, which is the same margin between third and 67th. He’s pulled it off while missing just one tackle in the run game all season.
Williams is owning the line of scrimmage; linemen can’t move him off the ball. His average depth of tackle against the run is 0.4 yards, the best mark among 43 defensive tackles with at least 10 solo tackles in the run game. Only three other players are even below the 1.0 mark.
Pro Football Focus has Williams ranked first among defensive tackles with a 91.8 run defense grade. ESPN has him ranked second with a 46% run-stop rate, although the top-ranked player, Solomon Thomas, plays a much smaller snap-count than Williams.
In the pass game, Williams has played below his usual standards, although he has been far from silent. He ranks 21st among defensive tackles with 17 total pressures (per PFF), while ESPN has him 20th with a 9% pass-rush win rate.
Per ESPN, Williams’ double-team rate is 60%; he is one of just 11 defensive tackles with a top-20 pass-rush win rate while being double-teamed at least 60% of the time. Of those 11 players, he is the only one who also ranks top-10 in run-stop win rate.
Simply put, Williams has been one of the most dominant defensive tackles in the NFL. He’s been the hands-down No. 1 run defender. While his pass rushing can improve, he’s been dealt a tough hand within a weak Jets defensive line (especially in terms of interior pass-rushing) that faces a high rate of quick passes, yet he’s still performed at a top-20 level despite the situation.
Nobody else at the position is providing close to the same level of two-way impact. Williams’ ability to consistently affect both phases has always been the separator that makes him such a unique force on the inside.
The box score shows a guy with the same number of sacks as Braiden McGregor, but if you watch Williams’ film or take a deep dive into his numbers, it is obvious that he remains one of the most unblockable interior defenders in football.