For the first time this season, the New York Jets finally scored at least 25 points in a game. The bad news for them was that the Indianapolis Colts scored more.
A sack of Aaron Rodgers sealed a 28-27 loss for the Jets on Sunday, bringing their record to 3-8. If any optimism was generated by that win over the Houston Texans a couple weeks ago, it has vanished. The Jets are not a playoff squad befallen by misfortune; they are simply bad. They are a get-right team for Anthony Richardson. They are an organization with a good chance at picking in the top 10 in next year's draft. Top five is also in play but they'll figure out a way to fuck that up, too.
Since firing Robert Saleh after a 2-3 start, the Jets have won one game. The defense used to be respectable enough to give an incompetent offense one more chance, but it too is regressing. New York was up 27-22 after kicking a field goal with 2:41 remaining. It took the Colts under two minutes of game time to score a touchdown and take the lead. Sauce Gardner talked about not pointing fingers after a loss in which he literally pointed fingers when his teammate gave up a big gain on that final Indianapolis drive. Interim head coach Jeff Ulbrich is not the guy to save this season, and also not immune from his quarterback's incessant habit of blame distribution:
"The reason I was thinking is because we had a conversation on the sideline and I was under the impression the decision was before the drive, we were going to go for two."
— Jets Videos (@snyjets) November 17, 2024
Aaron Rodgers on the conversation on whether to go for two or kick an extra point on their last touchdown: pic.twitter.com/37UBPjn220
What else is there to say about Aaron Rodgers that wasn't evident at the start of the season? I guess he used to suck more as a human than he did as a quarterback, but not anymore. He still talks about the team's faults as if he isn't the primary source of them. He's scared to throw deep. He whines constantly about media misinformation and then repeats a completely made-up stat he saw on Twitter. He is still obsessed with scoring 30 points in a game, as if 30 points would completely cure what ails this miserable disappointment of a team. The Jets need real medicine, or maybe euthanasia.
Not since the 2011 "dream team" Eagles has a squad underperformed its preseason hype by this much. Hell, that team ended up 8-8. The Jets would have to run the table to avoid a losing record. One more season of Zach Wilson genuinely might not have been as bad as this. At the very least, it couldn't have been worse.
