Got No Gas: Your Jets At/After the Bye Post

Well, time for that time again. The part where we either laugh at dumbasses for being way too high on their team, scowl at jackasses for being pleasantly surprised at their team, or grimace at smartasses for being perfectly right about their team. That’s right, it’s time for the DFO bye week posts. Well, let’s see which category I fall into this year.

When I once again braved the Greek underworld to write about my Jets back in August, I mentioned the seemingly time-tested tradition of “Jets new coach bounce,” where in the first year under a new administration the Jets look as good as they’ll ever be under that coach. The following 2-3 years leads to a steady decline, ruining said coach’s prospects of ever getting a job again and consigns the “long-awaited savior” of a franchise QB consigned to oblivion (see: Ryan and Sanchez though yes Rexy got a job with the Bills for a couple years; see: Darnold and Gase though the former’s actually played fairly well in Carolina doing things like beating the Jets in Week 1 because existence is pain).

If that’s once again the case, well, fuck. If this is the high point of Robert Saleh’s tenure, then for the next 2-3 years this team’s gonna be bad. (I know, no change there.) They’re 1-4 and a missed FG away from a Most Glorious Draw making them 0-4-1. That’d be more embarrassing than 0-5, because you couldn’t even seal the deal when you had a chance, and we all had to watch an extra ten minutes of football-adjacent excrement.

(The win, crazily enough, was over the Erotic Smashmouth Fightin’ Tractorcitos [full team name] where they let King Henry get his but were able to do enough against the defense to keep up. And Bullock missed the response FG in OT.)

In fairness, there have been injuries. A good chunk of ’em. It seemed like every day during camp someone was going on IR—CB Zane Lewis, big DE signing Carl Lawson, multiple other D-lineman, and of course, the big one, OT Mekhi Becton. I’ll personally list punter Braden “Mann Co.” Mann (which led to Thomas Morestead getting picked off the scrap heap), mainly to make a TF2 reference, because it’s topical and all, right?

But also in fairness, nobody knows what’s going on with Denzel “I Could Sell A Mill Saying Nothing on the Track” Mims. Are they going to use him? Are they leaving him in limbo to languish on the depth chart? Are they going to cut and/or trade him? And what about Elijah Moore, coming into and out of concussion protocol? Can Senor’s Nagatumo Spider Demons finally drop him and look for a WR or TE that actually gets used, or in true Jets fashion he’ll start balling out the week after and make me look like a dumbass?

Not that it’s mattered too much. If you’ve read this article at all, you’ve probably noticed that unless I fucked up formatting (very possible) a vast swath is missing. Well, the Jets haven’t showed up in the first quarter of games, so likewise neither has the first quarter of this article! (It is there, just highlight it.) The defense can’t get off the field (averaging over 8 plays allowed a drive, the most in the league, and an average drive time of about 4 1/2 minutes, also longest), but that’s nothing compared to the offense.

5 games, so 5 1st quarters. 75 minutes of football. They have 11 passing yards, 79 total offensive yards, and 5 first downs. Again, this is 5 quarters worth of football. That’s more than one game’s duration. How many points do they have in the first quarter? Ha, 1st quarter points, that’s cute, you’re cute, they don’t have any 1st quarter points. Which is why they’re last in points scored in total with 67 in 5 games (that’s an average of 13.4 a game). 27 of those were against Tennessee in the lone win.

The rest of the game stat-wise ends up being decidedly almost middle of the pack on both sides of the ball, so hey, progress, but that’s burying quite a hole for yourself when you’re down by a score or two after 15 minutes. Is it game script? Is it execution? I don’t know, but whatever it is, fix it.

The big item, rookie QB Zach Wilson, has been a mixed bag at best. That’s being generous by the way. He’s slightly less likely to get murdered after the bloodfest that was the first 3 games (15 sacks in Weeks 1-3, only 3 sacks in Weeks 4-5), and Becton should be back soon, if not this week, so hopefully even less likely. But he’s also got over a 2:1 INT/TD ratio. No, not TD/INT, that would be good. 4 TDs, 9 INTs, with 3 games shut out in the TD column. He’s been told to keep it boring, which you’d think should be second nature to someone from BYU, but so far, no good.

Looking at the rest of the sched, it doesn’t get supremely easier as they get the P*ts in Foxboro coming up on Sunday. The first matchup Wilson threw 4 picks, so it can only go up from there, right? Right? There are some winnable games against the Jags, 500s, and Eagles, and maybe the home game against the Dolphins, but a lot of it hinges on Wilson developing.

All in all, let’s say they win some of those games (but not all), and they already won the obligatory game they had no business being in. Let’s go with 4-13, and more mocking Senor and anyone else for having any sense of optimism around this club ever.