Nobody remembers sports teams that lose, or the people who built them. Al Davis, all-world renegade, is remembered because his Raiders were the Raiders, and because they often rose to meet his weekly mission statement.
Just win, baby, Davis famously said. It’s a simple request, yet not an easy one to grant. Winning is incredibly hard in the NFL. And ever since the Jets beat Davis’ Raiders in December 1968 to reach the one and only Super Bowl they’ve ever played in, they have proved that more than just about any team in pro football.
All these years later, no front-office executive would dare say, “Just win, baby,” to the 2022 Jets. A quick rundown of more appropriate directives might sound like this:
Just compete, baby.
Just improve, baby.
Just be competent, baby.
That’s where the Jets are as they open training camp for what will surely be their 54th straight season that doesn’t end in a Super Bowl trip since, as you might’ve heard, Joe Namath upset the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.
And that’s perfectly fine. Nobody is expecting the Jets to do what the Bengals did last year, jumping from a 6-25-1 combined record in 2019 and 2020 right onto the biggest stage in sports.
All their weary, fatalistic fans are asking for is progress. A clear outline of a plan. A sure sign of hope.
That’s not too much to ask for after the Jets missed the playoffs for 11 consecutive years, and delivered their paying customers a combined 6-27 record in the last year of Adam Gase and the first year of Robert Saleh. Even with an unforgiving schedule, the Jets should be good enough this time around to look like something other than counterfeit goods.
Their general manager, Joe Douglas, graded out between a B-plus and an A-plus in the draft, depending on whom you ask. Factoring in free-agent signings, the Jets are better on both sides of the ball. On paper. And the Jets don’t often honor what the numbers and odds say on paper.
Of course, the entire cause revolves around the second-year quarterback, Zach Wilson, who was drafted to be the franchise player. Wilson remains a complete mystery entering his sophomore season, since he didn’t do nearly enough to make anyone certain that he’s “the one.” He got bigger in the offseason, but we’ll find out soon enough if he got better, too.
“Seeing Zach right now as opposed to where he was as a rookie, just trying to keep his head above water,” Douglas said, “there’s a lot more confidence in him, and he’s a lot more comfortable in the scheme.”
Douglas made the roster better around his quarterback, that’s for sure. The Jets are stronger in the backfield (Breece Hall), at wide receiver (Garrett Wilson), at tight end (C.J. Uzomah, Tyler Conklin, Jeremy Ruckert) and on the offensive line (Laken Tomlinson). They are also stronger defensively up front (Jermaine Johnson II, a returning Carl Lawson) and in the secondary (Sauce Gardner, D.J. Reed and Jordan Whitehead). All in all, there is enough talent in place now for Wilson to function at a relatively high level.
How high? As I wrote during OTAs, a realistic goal for Wilson would be to finish 2022 as the second-best quarterback in the AFC East, behind Buffalo’s Josh Allen. Though his draft classmate, Mac Jones, completely outplayed him last year in making the Pro Bowl, Jones has lost a fleet of offensive assistants from Bill Belichick’s staff, including the league’s best coordinator, Josh McDaniels, who is the Raiders’ new head coach. Jones doesn’t have elite playmakers to work with either, and as an athletically challenged prospect drafted 13 spots after Wilson was picked at No. 2, he should be a hurdle the Jets quarterback can clear.
A realistic goal for the Jets? How about not finishing last in the division for the sixth time in seven years? That won’t be easy. Miami added Tyreek Hill and Terron Armstead, and New England hasn’t finished behind the Jets in two decades. But the Patriots seem a bit vulnerable, and hey, at some point the Jets have to move past them. Saleh was angered by how Belichick ran it up on him last year in a 54-13 beatdown at Foxborough, so he should go ahead and do something about it.
The Jets should feel motivated to even a score or two. They’ve been non-factors for far too long, and it’s time they inch closer to the kind of relevance they enjoyed when Rex Ryan was leading them to back-to-back AFC title games.
“I feel like it’s a Knicks-Yankees town,” Douglas told me in June. “Hopefully it can be a Jets town soon.”
Truth be told, even a Donovan Mitchell trade wouldn’t put the Knicks anywhere near the Yankees’ ballpark. But if the Jets want to at least win their race back to respectability with the Giants, they have an opportunity right in front of them. The Giants have also been bad for a long while, and they are in the first year, not the second, of a new regime, without any more clarity at quarterback.
Nobody will throw the Jets a parade if they win this battle of metropolitan New York. But then again, their fans aren’t asking for a parade. They are only asking for a reprieve, something the Jets should be good enough to give them.
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