MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Garrett Wilson leaning against a locker, clenched his fist and then clenched it open over and over. He grabbed his left hand and went finger by finger, squeezing each one, veins popping. Wilson’s frustration has been simmering for weeks. Now it boils.
It took Wilson three quarters to get his first target Sunday against the Miami Dolphins.
“I’m aware,” Wilson said, cutting off a question before it was finished.
Opposite the dressing room, New York Jets players bemoaned the team’s poor effort in a 30-0 loss. Wide receiver Allen Lazard took it even further.
“I think they just played a better game,” Lazard said. “They outwitted us, encouraged us.”
Attempt. Scheme.
Wilson disagreed with the assessment.
“Yes,” Wilson said. “If Allen said it, it’s probably true.”
Last week the Jets snapped a five game losing streak by beating the Houston Texans in a surprising 30-6 win, with all of the points coming in an explosive second half for an offense that has otherwise struggled all year. Zach Wilson had his best game. There was a sense that achievement might have been saved some jobsinsure them for 2024, when Aaron Rodgers will be back to save the day.
The best laid plans are ruined by blowouts. Jets cornerback DJ Reed Sunday’s effort slapped a “good old ass.”
Did Reed feel the Jets showed enough fight? Not really.
“Honestly, I would say until the middle of the third quarter they did,” Reed said. “You could see the energy … and the emotion on guys’ faces was pretty down the whole game. I wouldn’t say I was too happy about it.”
The Jets are 5-9. Sunday’s loss – along with some other results around the league – eliminated them from the playoffs for the 13th consecutive year, the longest playoff drought in any of the four major professional sports leagues. If Robert Saleh felt safe after last week, he should be worried now. There are losing games, and then there are losing the dressing room, and Saleh is coming dangerously close to the latter. It may already be happening.
The Jets were outplayed by the Dolphins, and this isn’t the first time Saleh has been worked out this season.
“You put together the best plan possible — sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s not,” Saleh said. “But overall, just from coaching to execution, everything on the offensive side just wasn’t good enough today.”
Losing Rodgers four times into the season with an Achilles injury was a difficult circumstance. Most teams struggle to survive without their starting quarterback, and much of the offensive line has also been decimated by injuries. But that is no excuse for this level of misery. The Jets started their 11th new offensive line in 14 games against the Dolphins, and it was a disaster from the start. Zach Wilson was bruised and battered all day, and stripped on the first possession. He was sacked four times in total, hit seven times and retired to the locker room before halftime.
Wilson initially left the game due to “dehydration,” according to the CBS broadcast. After halftime, Wilson was ruled out with a head injury, but has not yet been evaluated for a concussion, according to ESPN. Later in the game, Wilson was knocked out with a concussion. Late in the fourth quarter, The Athletics Saw Wilson enter the X-ray room. Saleh said after the game that Wilson was in concussion protocol. His status for next week is unclear.
Zach Wilson on his way to the X-ray room. #Jets pic.twitter.com/Z4wr5H262b
— Zack Rosenblatt (@ZackBlatt) December 17, 2023
When Wilson was reluctant at first to return to the starting line-up a few weeks ago, one reason was a fear of getting hurt behind the attack. His fears were clearly realized. The Jets’ offensive line may have been the most obvious problem the team had Sunday, which Saleh pointed out repeatedly in his postgame news conference.
“Yeah, when you get hit up front, yeah, it’s not — doesn’t feel good,” he said in response to a question asking if Sunday’s performance was “embarrassing.”
But the issues run deeper than that. The Jets are not the only team in the NFL has been ravaged by injuries on the offensive line, or what their starting quarterback has had to deal with a season-ending injury. The Bengal is 3-1 with Jake Browning since he was tapped to fill out Joe Burrow. The Brownies is 2-1 with Joe Flacco, and 9-5 overall despite losing both their starting tackles and their top backups. Their center (Ethan Pocic) missed Sunday’s game, and one of their starting guards (Joel Bitonio) left early with an injury.
The best coaches make the most of what they have, putting their players in position to succeed even when they are overstaffed. The Jets don’t — and that’s with one of the NFL’s best defensean elite wide receiver (Wilson) and explosive running back (Breece Hall).
This team mostly wasted a great season with that defense, though even the defense struggled against Miami. Wide receiver Jaylen Waddle Reed burned on a 60-yard touchdown and finished with 142 yards. Run back Raheem Mostert scored two touchdowns and the Dolphins scored even without 30 points Tyreek Hill play.
And then there’s Wilson, one of the NFL’s most talented wide receivers, wasted. He watched from the sidelines as Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel opened up Waddle, something Nathaniel Hackett couldn’t do for the Jets all season.
“I think they have a lot of pieces in their favor that make it easier to scheme,” Wilson said. “Tyreek goes down, they put Waddle in there and he goes for 150 (yards). And this is, this is the ball that I grew up with. But that’s not how it’s going to be. I have to figure out how to be better, run better routes, be better in the meeting rooms, figure out how to be involved early and often. And how we can win games.”
Wilson is finding it harder to hide his frustration, especially on Sunday, when he was targeted just four times and cameras caught him on the sidelines getting animated with his irritation.
Garrett Wilson and Aaron Rodgers have a chop sesh on the sidelines pic.twitter.com/hgXZEMbn0f
— NFL on CBS 🏈 (@NFLonCBS) December 17, 2023
“I mean, it seems like we’re unintentional, to be honest,” Wilson said. “That’s my mindset. It’s simple. I feel this need not be the case. But it was. I think I have to fix it. I need to figure out how to get involved in the first term. Maybe it starts training quickly. I do not know. I have to show something, I have to do something. They have a good plan for us. They did their best to come after us and things made it difficult. This is how it was and I have to be able to adapt. I do not know. I have to figure it out.”
It’s not Wilson’s job to figure that out. It’s on Saleh, and Hackett.
Now there are three games left in this season, and players are starting to say the silent part out loud. The truth: The Jets weren’t prepared for Sunday’s game.
Against the Texans last week, the Jets offense was productive. Otherwise, it was one of the worst offenses in franchise history by most measures, and the worst third-down offense in recorded NFL history. At halftime, the Jets had accumulated just 4 net offensive yards – and negative 10 net passing yards. At the end of the game, the Jets had 103 total yards and Zach Wilson and Trevor Siemian combined to account for 80 passing yards.
Consider this: Saleh has (and will continue to) refuse to make a change to his offensive play-calling structure, where Hackett remains untouchable, not only because of his relationship with Rodgers — but because Saleh doesn’t believe Hackett is to blame for the Jets’ issues on offense. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Eagles is 10-3 and just banked defensive coordinator Sean Desai for Matt Patricia.
GO DEEPER
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Those 103 yards by the Jets are tied for the fourth fewest in franchise history, and three of the five lowest yard totals have come under Saleh’s watch. Once Zach Wilson was stripped on the opening possession, it felt like it was going to be a long afternoon, and then it was. On the next drive, the Jets attempted a fake punt on fourth-and-4, a direct snap to safety Ashtyn Davis, which predictably failed. By the time Wilson left the game, the Jets were down 17-0. It was 24-0 at halftime and 27-0 after the third quarter.
“They executed more than us,” cornerback Sauce Gardner said. “I do not know what to say. They executed us.”
It’s fair to wonder if Saleh’s job is on the line next week. If the Jets lose 4-10 Washington commanders team, at home, it really could be the end of the road. It will be difficult for owner Woody Johnson to reverse that with this coaching staff.
“It’s disappointing,” Saleh said. “From the first series of the year until now, it’s just been a constant battle. I appreciate the heck out of our guys. We still have three games left to finish strong. As bad as we feel right now, we have to remember that last week we felt pretty good too. We’ve got a good Washington team coming in that’s going to lick their chops, so we’ve got to go and get down to business and get ready to play that one.”
When the Los Angeles Chargers lose to the Baltimore Ravens Coach Brandon Staley said in Week 12 that his team would be “blown out of the stadium” if his messages stopped getting through to the players, if he lost the locker room. A few weeks later, the Chargers went 63-21 against the Las Vegas Raiders and Staley was fired the next day.
So, did Saleh lose the locker room?
Check back next week.
(Photo: Megan Briggs/Getty Images)
