LAS VEGAS — The New York Jets’ season has turned into a game of Mad Libs. Change a few nouns or adjectives here and there, maybe, but at the end, the story is still the same.
The defense plays well. The offense can’t finish drives. The offense doesn’t get into the end zone. Zach Wilson makes some confounding decisions. Greg Zuerlein has a busy day, kicking field goals, the only source of offense. Thomas Morstead has a busy day, punting, because the offense can’t consistently move the ball. Penalties kill drives. The defense does its job. The Jets are still in the game at the end. Then it’s over.
Robert Saleh calls out the self-inflicted wounds in his postgame news conference but feels the Jets are close. He won’t blame the quarterback or the offensive coordinator. The defensive players bite their tongues and talk about how the team would win if they could only score points themselves, or hold their opponents to zero points instead of 3, 6, 10 or 16. The offensive players are at a loss for words.
Rinse, repeat. It’s all the same — and Saleh doesn’t seem to have an itch to make the sort of change that might jolt the offense into competence. He won’t bench Wilson. He won’t take play-calling away from offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett. The Jets lost to the Raiders 16-12 on Sunday, a team so dysfunctional it fired its head coach, general manager and offensive coordinator a few weeks ago, with one of the worst defenses in the league and a fourth-round rookie starting at quarterback. And it was the same as it ever was.
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If Saleh isn’t going to grab the reins of the Jets offense and do what needs to be done to fix it before the season fades away into nothingness — another year without the playoffs, like so many before — then maybe the players will have to take control of the situation themselves.
“They asked me today: Are you OK to speak to the media?” tight end Tyler Conklin said after the game. “I said, yeah, I’ll speak, but what do you guys expect me to say? That’s the thing, it’s a broken record at this point. We’ve gotta figure it out. We can’t keep going out here and doing this over and over again. Letting the defense down, our team down. I wish I had answers to (reporters’) questions about why we can’t score in the red zone, why we had a lot of penalties, all those things, but there’s really no good answer to give you guys besides we’ve gotta figure it the f— out.”
The Jets scored on their first three drives on Sunday night, all field goals. They punted on five consecutive drives after that, followed by another field goal, an interception by Wilson, and then the clock running out on the final drive. The Jets haven’t scored a touchdown in 11 quarters. They’ve scored 13 offensive touchdowns in nine games. Wilson has thrown one touchdown pass in his last five games and five for the season. For comparison, Josh Dobbs has accounted for six touchdowns in two games in 12 days since getting traded to the Vikings. At the end of Sunday’s game, the Jets had five punts, four field goals, eight penalties, 14 first downs, and zero touchdowns. Five of those first downs came on the final two drives of the game.
“It’s frustrating,” running back Breece Hall said. “I’ve been saying that since the first week.”
Wide receiver Garrett Wilson appeared emotionally distraught after the game, on the verge of tears.
This as dejected as I’ve seen Garrett Wilson after a loss. pic.twitter.com/80rnhVV9Cb — Zack Rosenblatt (@ZackBlatt) November 13, 2023The first words that came out of Saleh’s mouth at his news conference after the game were the same ones he’s said just about every week, win or lose. All anyone wants to know is why his offense has somehow gotten worse from last year, when he parted with Mike LaFleur as his offensive coordinator and revamped his offensive coaching staff.
He has made a lot of excuses. The Jets have not been able to find any solutions.
“The hard part for me is when I’m watching the game — it’s easy to look at the play-caller, the head coach, the quarterback,” Saleh said. “But we’re moving the ball. Today we moved the ball. But it’s just penalties, penalties on the O-line, penalties at tight end, penalties at running back. Just dumb, dumb stuff that we need to get cleaned up or it’s not going to change. But we can clean it up and at least give ourselves a chance to play clean football, so see what it looks like. I still believe it’ll look pretty good.”