The 2024 Jets Season Ended Monday Night

 The New York Jets season is over. Thanks to New York’s third consecutive heart-breaking loss, this time to the division rival Buffalo Bills, the once hopeful season has now crumbled into to a million pieces. It’s officially over!

Sure, the Jets yesterday morning finalized a trade with the Las Vegas Raiders to land disgruntled wide receiver Davante Adams to team up again with Aaron Rodgers, but this move doesn’t solve the true problems with the Jets.

The Jets are the most penalized team in the NFL this year with 462 yards. The second most penalized team is the Houston Texans with 429 yards. Houston has the most penalties in the league with 51 and the Jets are just one penalty behind them with 50. This includes Monday Night’s game which was the most penalized game this season with 22 accepted penalties between the Jets and the Bills and a combined 204 yards worth of laundry.

I’ll agree with you that the officiating on Monday Night was perhaps the worst officiated game by NFL officials since the replacement referees, but that excuse only goes so far with the Jets because they routinely get penalized at a grotesque clip. Would Adams have made a difference for the Jets Monday Night against Buffalo, yes, he would have, but he wouldn’t have impacted this team where they need it most at the moment.

Kicker Greg Zuerlein missed field goals on back-to-back drives that would have change the course of the game. The first was a 32-yard attempt which was the first field goal missed by any kicker from this year from that mark. All of the NFL’s kickers from 32 yards and in were 106 for 106 before Zuerlein’s miss. The next was a missed 43-yard that banged off the left upright and fell mercilessly to the MetLife turf. In the last three weeks Zuerlein has missed three kicks at the end of games that directly impacted the final result. The first of which was a missed 50-yard field goal that would’ve gave the Jets a 12-10 lead of the Denver Broncos with 56 seconds to go. The next is the 32-yard chip shot that would’ve gave the Jets a 23-20 lead with 59 seconds to go in the 3rd quarter Monday night. And the final is that field goal that hit the upright that would have also given the Jets a 23-20, this time with 9:44 to go in the game. So, unless Davante Adams can teach Greg Zuerlein how to make field goals again, he won’t be providing mych help to one of the biggest reasons the Jets offense isn’t succeeding as well as it should be this year.

What Adams also cannot do is block incoming pass rushers on their way to sack Aaron Rodgers. The Jets are tied for 17th in the league allowing 2.7 sacks per game this season. This is after heavily addressing the offensive line in the offseason. 2024 for the Jets O-Line was supposed to be different with John Simpson, Morgan Moses (back for a second tour of duty), rookie first round pick Olu Fashanu from Penn State, and future Hall of Famer Tyron Smith in the fold. The Jets last season gave up 3.8 sacks per game (28th in the NFL), but still the rate at which Aaron Rodgers is picking himself off the ground after getting tackled in the backfield is unsustainable for a 40-year-old. Rodgers has been limited the past two weeks in practice due to injury management on his knee and ankle problems. That is due to the offensive line not being able to hold up their end of the bargain.

And for a moment I would like to shine some light on the 40-year-old savior of the franchise. Aaron Rodgers has not been as advertised so far this year. Rodgers has had the opportunity to win games in the final moments for three straight weeks and has not gotten the job down all three times. Two of which ended with Rodgers throwing game ending interceptions. Both interceptions were intended for Mike Williams. On Monday Night, Williams did slip and fall which allowed Bills cornerback Taron Johnson to seal the game with a pick. But that doesn’t remove Rodgers from his part of the blame for those interceptions or where the Jets are this year. Both interceptions intended for Mike Williams were balls that were under thrown. Again, Williams did slip, but that doesn’t resolve Rodgers for blaming Williams for running the wrong route. Rodgers is supposed to be the leader of this team and he might be the only quarterback in the league that places blame everywhere but himself. Davante Adams won’t Rodgers look inwards either.

The dream version would have the Jets sitting at 4-1 and a top of the AFC East. Instead, they are 2-4 and in second place only because the Patriots are in the beginnings of a rebuild and the Miami Dolphins have lost their franchise quarterback for multiple weeks. At some point as the great Bill Parcells famously said, “you are what your record says you are.” Well, the Jets don’t have a kicker, have a porous offensive line, and an aging quarterback that doesn’t believe he’s capable of making a mistake or being blamed for making a mistake. It’s time for not only Jet fans but the entire NFL landscape to see who the Jets are right now.

If you need more convincing to see the writing on the wall, since 1990 of the 224 teams that have started 2-4 only 24 of them have made the playoffs. The NFL is in the midst of a three streak that a 2-4 team has made the playoffs (2021 the Patriots, Eagles, & 49’ers, 2022 the Jaguars, & 2023 the Packers), but no team that has started 2-4 has ever won the Super Bowl.

So why trade for Davante Adams with all the problems that the 2-4 Jets have and the odds stacked against them? Because that’s what the Jets do. They distract you from the obvious disfunction and clear as day issues with a big headline and shiny new toy. Rodgers and Adams will have flashback plays through the Jets remaining 11 games. But it will be difficult to have those plays end up as results of wins because the group around them dragging them down more so than any Green Bay Packer team ever did. So let the Jets be the Jets and don’t fall for the same three card monte trick they always try to pull. These are the same old Jets—they are just dressed up in a new costume.