Steelers 37 Jets 15: The worst team money can buy

I think we can safely say at this point that the 2024 New York Jets are a bad football team.

What other conclusion could we draw? This team has a record of 2-5. The losing streak stands at four games and was narrowly defeated by the Pittsburgh Steelers 37-15 in Week 7 on Sunday Night Football.

There are numerous frustrating aspects of this loss for the New York Jets. One of them is that the Jets were clearly the better team in the first 29 minutes. They led 15-6 and were potentially looking for another score just before halftime. Then Aaron Rodgers threw a bad interception. The Steelers scored a touchdown. The Jets never scored again and the Steelers were not stopped again when they had the ball. The final result was a 22-point victory for Pittsburgh.

If you lose by three touchdowns after dominating the first half, that’s a sign you’re a bad football team.

It’s hard not to compare this Jets club to some of the other professional sports teams in New York. Just as the Jets were in the midst of being dominated, the Liberty won their first championship in franchise history. The night before, the Yankees won a game and advanced to the World Series for the first time in 15 years. And on Sunday, the Mets ended their season with an NLCS loss to the Dodgers. However, once the disappointment wears off, I imagine all Mets fans will look back fondly on 2024 and be proud of a team that exceeded all expectations and delivered one magical memory after another.

Given the hype this Jets team was experiencing, many expected it to be at this level. Instead, it reminds me of another Mets team, one from 32 years ago. This team was full of big names. It had the highest payroll in baseball. There was a lot of hype and expectations. It finished with 72 wins and 90 losses and fifth place in a six-team division. Bob Klapish and John Harper wrote a book that chronicles this season called The worst team money can buy.

At this point, I would argue that the 2024 New York Jets are the NFL’s candidate for this title. This is a star-studded team. It’s also a bad team.

In times like these, I think it’s important to understand how we got here.

Obviously, I have interacted with a lot of Jets fans on this website and through my podcast. I keep hearing the same things over and over again.

People talk about how the team has tried everything over the last fourteen years and nothing has worked. This team is just unlucky. As soon as the players get here, they start stinking like it’s fate.

However, I do not consider any of these explanations to be sufficient.

It’s not really hard to understand why future Hall of Famers like Aaron Rodgers and Tyron Smith play poorly. They are old and dilapidated.

Smith is a Ring of Honor player for the Cowboys who spent 13 years with the organization. He’s a popular figure, but his team wouldn’t live up to a Jets contract with modest guarantees.

Rodgers was 39 years old and coming off his worst season when the Jets traded him. I’m sure his Achilles injury in 2023 hastened his decline, but trading for him and building everything around him was a far riskier proposition than many people were willing to admit at the time.

The bigger issue for me, however, is how we got to this point. And that’s precisely because, contrary to what I’ve heard, the Jets haven’t tried everything to fix this team.

What do the strongest organizations in this league value?

They are obsessed with hoarding draft picks and know that the lifeblood of good football teams lies in the form of young, cost-controlled talent.

They are focused on player development and understand that most prospects entering the NFL need to be nurtured.

They understand the traits they need to run their systems effectively and target players with those traits.

They take a targeted approach to free agency and commerce. The player’s fit and future performance are more important than stocking the players who have the biggest names based on their past performance.

They try to exploit every possible advantage, whether it’s managing their salary cap efficiently, breaking new ground with analytics, or discovering advanced training methods.

Now I would like to ask you a question. Do any of these correspond to what the New York Jets have done over the last fourteen years? Did the Jets really try? everything?

The only point they even came close was in 2021-2022, and as soon as they had the chance to sign Aaron Rodgers, they quickly turned away from that point.

None of the things I mentioned are easy and effective to implement. That’s the point. Building a winning football team is hard work. NFL teams are large and complex organisms. At the end of the day, if you don’t do things right, there’s no one who can actually do enough to change things. Their squad consists of 53 players. 22 of them are starters and many others are key players. There are large coaching staffs, support staffs, training staffs, front offices and other departments.

I don’t know of any other way to describe the way the Jets operate under Woody Johnson, less as a football team trying to win a Super Bowl and more as an organization trying to win news cycles.

The Jets are not adopting any of the best practices of successful organizations. This is hard work. It’s much easier to sell that there is either a savior on the way who will solve all the team’s problems, or a scapegoat who is holding the team back and whose departure will lead the team to glory.

Yes, the Jets have had some bad luck along the way. There were bad rebounds of the ball, bad calls that went against them, and untimely injuries. Of course, they lost their quarterback for four games last season. But even with better luck, the Jets wouldn’t have built teams that would last.

It’s not that easy to find the next brilliant general manager or head coach, especially if you don’t give them the authority to build the team properly. The next quarterback you draft won’t boost the franchise if you don’t do anything to help his development.

And it’s great to find someone to blame. But when you’ve been the least successful franchise in professional sports for more than a decade, chances are good that more than one person is holding you back.

At this point, it really feels like this team is being run by the owner to satisfy the short-term whims of fans on Twitter and callers on WFAN rather than being built to win a championship.

Just look at something Woody Johnson said last December.

Owner Woody Johnson told The Post on Sunday that general manager Joe Douglas and head coach Robert Saleh will return for the 2024 season.

“My decision is to keep them,” Johnson said in an exclusive interview before the Jets’ 30-28 win Sunday against the Commanders. “I think we’ve taken some very positive steps. The culture in the team is much better. The defense is better. The offense needs some pieces.”

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“Just to maintain continuity with Aaron and the team that we have,” Johnson cited as the reason he wants Douglas and Saleh back. “Like I said a year ago, we need a quarterback. We had a quarterback for four games. We haven’t been able to replace him since. If we have a good quarterback, it makes everyone’s job easier. It makes the line better, the receivers better.”

The implication was obvious. The Jets were close. All they had to do was welcome back Aaron Rodgers and release saboteur Zach Wilson and the team would be in top form.

Five games into the next season, Saleh was fired.

Think about it. That’s how quickly Johnson went from claiming that Saleh was the right coach for the team to saying that the definition of insanity was continuing to do the same things and expecting different results.

What surprised me most was the common reaction to Saleh’s firing that Woody deserved credit for admitting a mistake.

But did he really admit a mistake? Tell me what problems Saleh showed in 2024 that weren’t clear when Woody announced at the end of the 2023 season that Saleh was the right man for the job. There were none. And Woody couldn’t tell you what Saleh’s mistakes were anyway.

Zach Wilson was no longer there to blame all the problems. Woody needed a new scapegoat. Fans on Twitter and WFAN wanted Saleh gone. Easy as pie. The news cycle is won. The Jets are back on track. Without Saleh’s terrible coaching, the Jets were now on their way to the Super Bowl.

Not so fast. The Jets lose to Buffalo. Aaron Rodgers throws a crucial interception and blames the route Mike Williams ran. Obviously, these receivers have no chemistry with Rodgers. That’s the problem. So Williams is our new scapegoat, and a trade is initiated for Davante Adams, our new savior.

Of course, one of the reasons scapegoating people is so attractive is that they are often complicit in a team’s problems. Wilson was a failure as a quarterback. Saleh lacked the tools to lead this team effectively and Williams seemed like a shell of the quality player he was with the Chargers.

But those failures never cause the Jets to look inward. They never ask why the mistakes of including these people were made in the first place. They never wonder what flaws this reveals in the way they do business. They also never ask why the team failed to develop these people’s skills.

It is exclusively reactive. This guy is bad. The fans want him out. This will surely fix the problem.

However, there are no quick fixes in the NFL. It’s easy to get rid of people who don’t do their job. That won’t get you anywhere.

It’s much harder to ask tough questions. It’s not easy to build the infrastructure of a successful football team.

I wish I could say what happened this year was that Woody Johnson was entering a period of self-reflection. After about a quarter century of leading this team, the ability to self-reflect doesn’t seem to be something Woody is capable of.

Not when the time can be spent finding a new scapegoat and a quick fix.

Until that changes, the Jets won’t have significant success.