What if we were just wrong about the Jets?
Everyone is looking at the 2-6 Jets and searching for reasons why a roster that was viewed as one of the best in the NFL is underachieving. But what if they are just not as good as we thought they were?
When you look at the Jets roster, the names jump off the page. It starts with Aaron Rodgers, one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history and a four-time MVP. Davante Adams has been to six Pro Bowls. Tyron Smith has been to eight. C.J. Mosley is a five-time Pro Bowler. Haason Reddick is a two-time Pro Bowler.
Jets owner Woody Johnson called it the best team he’s had in 25 years with the Jets.
But this is not fantasy football. And it’s not 2019. The Jets look old … and slow. And when you look at those five players aforementioned Pro Bowlers, you know why. They’re old. They are all 30 or over.
“We have a talented roster, you know, on paper, super talented roster on paper,” cornerback D.J. Reed said Monday. “But quite honestly, that doesn’t mean anything.”
Reed is correct. Names on a sheet of paper do not translate into wins, and the Jets are just too old at too many key spots, particularly on offense. The Jets do have some good, young players — Sauce Gardner, Quincy Williams, Quinnen Williams, Garrett Wilson, Breece Hall and Jermaine Johnson, who is out for the season — but the age has infiltrated the Jets roster.
Sunday in Foxborough, the Jets looked like the old driver in the left lane with his turn signal on. They were slow getting out of the huddle. They were slow executing plays. They used all three timeouts in the first quarter and had a delay of game on a two-point conversion.
You can blame coaching all you want. Robert Saleh had to go. Now, Jeff Ulbrich stinks, too. They are not blameless here. But this is also about players and the man who assembled this team.
General manager Joe Douglas has escaped his share of the blame this season. For one, he’s invisible during the season unlike the head coach who has four press conferences a week. Secondly, everyone has given Douglas the benefit of the doubt because the narrative has been this is a great roster that is underachieving for some reason.
The truth is this is a deeply flawed roster and eight games has shown that.
Douglas signed old players because he missed on young ones. In many ways, the Jets are paying for the sins of Douglas’ first drafts in 2020 and 2021 in the 2024 season. Douglas swung and missed like postseason Aaron Judge in those drafts before hitting it over the fence in 2022.
Let’s just look at the first two rounds, where you should hit on players more than you miss and what has happened since then.
In 2020, the Jets took Mekhi Becton in the first round to be their left tackle for the next decade. He was a bust and now they have Smith, who is a future Hall of Famer but a current bad left tackle for the Jets. In the second round, they took wide receiver Denzel Mims. Douglas added another receiver in the second round in 2021, selecting Elijah Moore. Mims is out of the league. Moore was traded away after two seasons. That led to signing Allen Lazard, Mike Williams and trading for Adams. The Jets should have three good wide receivers right now. They used three premium draft picks on the position in three straight drafts. Instead, they have Wilson, Rodgers’ aging buddies and a broken down Williams.
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That gets us to Rodgers, who is only here because Douglas whiffed on the biggest decision of his six years in the GM chair when he drafted Zach Wilson at No. 2 overall in 2021. Wilson flopped and the Jets recognized that midway into his second year. That led to the Rodgers trade, which was always a gamble but people did not want to see that bringing in a 39-year-old quarterback off a bad 2022 season might not work.
It hasn’t … and here we are.
The Jets and everyone following them are searching for answers why the Jets are 2-6 and barreling toward another rebuild after five straight losses.
Douglas, who is 29-62 as the Jets GM, does not have a contract for 2025 and it feels like there is zero chance he will be back.
Douglas tried to defeat Father Time with this 2024 Jets roster. Like most everyone else the Jets have played lately, that was a matchup he could not win.
