Spoiler: The "you" in the thread title refers to the Jets, not to any of you. I love my Gang Green brothers, and I’m generally a very positive fan. Definitely a glass-half-full guy. But I wince a bit at some of the expectations I’m seeing on this board for the 2022 season. I don’t criticize anyone’s opinion, but I will humbly offer a few thoughts about where we are and where we are going. First, let’s talk about what it means to say we are “rebuilding.” For ten years, the Jets have been living in the basement. For ten years, Jets fans have been talking about how we are rebuilding, but being in the basement does not automatically mean that you are rebuilding. Sometimes, it just means that you’re just living in the basement. For most of the past decade, the Jets have been living in the basement and talking about rebuilding without actually rebuilding. But over the last year, I see meaningful progress. Huge talent influxes in the draft and free agency. Coaches that seem to know what they are doing. A GM that seems to be able to recognize talent when he sees it and manage our salary cap and draft capital intelligently. So, I'm hopeful that we are really rebuilding. But winning 8-9 games means being average, and we are not yet average or close to it. We remain worse than most teams in the NFL. You can’t expect to go .500 when you are worse than most teams. Why do I say we are worse than most teams? I’m not critical of our coaches/FO/players; I’m simply acknowledging that "rebuilding" does not mean "we're now average." Given where we started, it is a long road to average. Longer than we have traveled so far. Consider: A. Talent: We have no returning stars. Zero. Nada. Wow, that sounds harsh. So let me walk it back a bit. I am confident that we have many stars-in-the-making. I believe that we have numerous potential Pro Bowlers among Zach, Elijah Moore, AVT, Becton, Garret Wilson, Breece Hall, Michael Carter, Sauce, JJ, and Lawson. But none of them are currently anywhere close to that level. IMHO, no player on our roster was a star for us last year. Some were better than others, so you might call them "stars by Jets standards," but they weren't "stars by NFL standards." Now, I recognize that Berrios was an All-Pro returner, and LT was a Pro-Bowler on another team. OK. But an incoming free agent and a special teams guy are hardly the kind of returning All-Pro talent that you see among top-tier or even middle-tier NFL teams. Average teams have returning stars. We do not. It will be another year or two before the JD draft talent comes into their own and produces the kinds of stars we need to become average. B. Schemes: Unproven and so far Unsuccessful. I believe in Mike LaFleur and the scheme he is putting together. But in 2021, that scheme led us to the 28th-ranked offense (ppg). And our defensive scheme left us ranked 32 in ypg allowed. Now, there are a lot of reasons and a lot of excuses that give us reasonable hope things will get better. But average teams enter the season with a heckuvalot more than just hope that they won’t suck nearly as badly as they did last year. So far, neither our offensive scheme nor our defensive scheme has shown an ability to be average. “Average” would be an enormous step up on either side of the ball, and we need both sides of the ball to take that enormous step before our team as a whole will be average. It's coming. But we have a ways to go before reaching "average." C. Depth: Lots of scariness in a league that plays 17 games. You can’t go 17 games without meaningful injuries to starters. But the Jets have too many rooms that don’t have room for injuries. (That was a pretty cool play on words.) If we lose a starter on OL, S, or LB, we will be in serious trouble. You might argue IDL is in the same category. Average teams do not have 3-4 position groups that will put the entire team in serious trouble if a single starter gets injured. The bottom line for me: I think we have improved tremendously over the past 12 months, and I believe in what JD is doing. With that much progress and hope, it’s natural to think and expect that we should at least be average or close to it. But we started this journey so far below average that we may have forgotten just how good average is. I will be satisfied with 6 wins, happy with 7, and elated with anything more than that. But I’m only expecting 6-7. For those expecting more, I hope you are right, but I fear that our journey has always been a bigger one than you may realize. Let’s hope I’m wrong.
Hate to boil it down to one player but it’s Zach Wilson. He’s such a high variance player and so the Jets are a high variance team. I seriously wouldn’t be surprised if he’s horrendous again or if he jumps up and becomes a top 10’QB. Somewhere in the middle is more likely, but there’s a non-zero chance of either extreme happening as well.
The word is potential as I and others have said on different threads this off season. The potential is there to move out of the basement but until that potential translates into reality they are still stuck there.
Top 10 is almost out of the question if we want to be any kind of realistic. If he were that good I think we would have seen more "holy crap" flashes last season. But if he were to settle in as legit #14-17 or something (which would mean passing #'s the Jets haven't seen since Namath) there is no reason the Jets couldn't make some hay, win a lot of games, and be consistent playoff contenders for years to come.
I would agree that it's generally unrealistic to expect a 2nd year QB to be top 10, especially in today's pass-heavy league that is filled with really good QBs. I do think Zach did show plenty of flashes and a lot of growth last year, and that he can become top 10. But probably not this year.
Great post my friend. Great points made and I agree with all. I also expect around 6 or 7. That's why I started a thread saying if we end up winning 8 games that would mean the future is extremely bright. I think our season record will depend on the health of the overall team. If Becton and Carl Lawson have an injury free season both OL and DL will function pretty well. With an improved TE room and RB room, Wilson should be able to do some damage. Lots of reasons to be hopeful really. I think Jets will be in playoff mix consistently starting next year.
A: Depends what you mean by returning starts. I'd definitely count FAs and LT is one of them as in proven player. The thing about the NFL is a player isn't a star until they are. we have potential but i'd agree not many proven stars. I mean justin jefferson was just a draft pick replacing a star WR until you know he stepped on the field and was a top 10 guy as a rookie. so it's always possible. the 1 thing i'll disagree with though is moore is defiantly at that level he had a 6 week span where he was a top 5 WR in the NFL and he did that with 4 different QBs in that 6 weeks (white, johnson, flacco, wilson) making it even more impressive. then he got hurt and missed the last 5 weeks. i'd also argue MC is a star at RB. he was top 3 in the NFL in forced missed tackles and top 10 in yards after contact. again injuries derailed him. both moore and MC if healthy should be 1k yard 10TD guys B i mean it's pretty proven. injuries killed us but when mostly healthy we moved the ball well. we had 3 different QBs throw for 300+ yard games. it's also a proven system in several other teams. People are focusing too much on stats. we were the most injured team last year and thats the big reason stats were down. C most teams lack depth, it's the teams that stay healthy that tend to win more. hell even the colts back in the days who were guaranteed playoff teams finished last because 1 injury (manning).
Pretty accurate assessment IMO. There is a lot of reason for hope, if not optimism, but a few key injuries - which the Jets always seem to suffer - and it's buckle your seatbelts for another crash landing. I lived through too many of these over the years, so if it happens again, I may just leave my seatbelt unbuckled and let the crash do what I seem unable to do: ending my Jets fanship.
Great summary. I am very optimistic if we stay healthy. It is really hard to stay healthy. If everyone can hang on to their fanship another year, I think we are well poised to take this highly talented roster into 2023 and use our 2023 draft picks to build real depth at core positions. Use the first four picks in 2023 to bolster our strong-but-thin OL, IDL, LB, and S, and suddenly we start looking like a scary football team.
I was very disappointed when I opened this post as I’m really sick of living in my moms basement but I digress. The 1st couple paragraphs were observational and accurate. Talking about a rebuild or putting a poster on the wall and calling it a rebuild is no way to live. Things have been different. We tore it down and have rebuilt. I had to stop after the 4th paragraph bc I hate opinions being passed off as fact. The fact is we don’t know how we’ll stack up this year. Most hope for the best but express their concerns with varied amounts of vigor. Are we a better team this year compared to last? I’d say 100% yes. Will we be better next year? Again, 100% yes. Unproven seems to be the key word and I don’t think there’s a single person who would disagree that we are unproven. Unsuccessful? I disagree. Stats are great. I don’t have anything I’m watching rn (suggestions are welcome) so I far too otter have replays of last seasons game on in the background. The is a noticeable difference in the Jets O from the beginning of the season and the end. Like noticeable noticeable. In the beginning of the season they looked like the SOJ. In the end of the season at times they looked like a well oiled football team… a college team but well oiled none the less. TLDR; stop passing off opinion as fact. We don’t know how we are compared to other teams only compared to last year’s team. How much we improved will be revealed in about 4/5 months. * Great point in depth, in my predictive 53 man roster, I have JD adding a LB and OT after some cap casualties happen. Edit: I took unproven as we are unproven but upon reading @GasedAndConfused post and then reading the original, I see you meant the actual scheme. I defer to GAC.
Well I guess my point is that "being a top 10" QB is a lot easier to say and think than actually happen. If Zach were to actually do that he'd have to be better than guys like Prescot, Stafford, and Carr and have a baseline statistical line of somewhere in the 4500 30/10 range to even be in the discussion. While I can't sit here and say that is absolutely possible I'm just not seeing where we have any particular right to expect it. Maybe there are examples of quantum leaps like that in NFL history. I suspect there are very few. I think a far more realistic hope is that Wilson and the entire Jets team are orders of magnitude better than they were last year, win several games, make a few others really exciting and Zach ends up with top 20 QB #'s. That would be a really nice move forward and the Jets would be one of the most improved teams in the entire NFL.
I think the biggest point to me is injuries…we had a lot of key injuries to front line players and didn’t have the depth to replace them with adequate players in many cases…on OL we did because Fant and Moses were good enough to replace Becton, but it’s hard to lose your top two receivers like we did and your only pass rusher like we did. Not sure I’d call MC a star yet but I do think he’s very good and has that potential. I hadn’t remembered about the 3 QBs throwing for 300 yards…Zach actually threw for 297 against Tennessee so close enough! to pile on so many of the other comments I agree we have potential…I agree a LOT depends on Zach improving (and here is where the board really divides on everyone’s confidence in him being able to improve significantly from what was a tough rookie year), and a lot depends on staying healthy and avoiding the significant run of injuries we had last year. My final,point is I think our schedule is pretty brutal, so I do believe we’ll be a much improved team but I also fear that our record may not reflect that as much. If we hit 6-7 wins I’d be happy, and I’d be REALLY ecstatic if we managed to hit 8-9 wins. I think 10 is not realistic and if I had to bet I’d guess 6. but I’ll be pulling for them week in week out…
no team has the depth to deal with the amount of injuries we did. thats the NFL and salary cap. You can't have starter quality players 3rd or 4th on the depth chart. they won't want to be sitting and they would cost too much we did have 3 QBs throw for 300. white, johnson, and flacco. zach was 3 yards short of being the 4th
oh man…totally forgot about Josh Johnson!!! you’re right! ok so now what does that say about Zach? We had literally a first game 5th round pick in White, a washed Flacco though at least a guy with credentials and a Super Bowl to his name, and a long term #3 backup type guy in Johnson do it…not good optics for a second overall pick to look as bad as he did when 3 other guys came in and looked better. Ah well…this isn’t a bash Wilson thread so I’ll leave that be here and just say I think he will be better this year for many reasons…
says he's a rookie who played too much hero ball instead of just running the offense. he looked a lot better then 2nd half of the year after his injury but by then our skill position groups were wrecked. those 3 QBs did well because they had access to MC, moore, davis, etc. most of the passing yards those games were YAC and moore was on a streak especially. whites 400 yard game was a lot of dink and dunk. zach would have had his 300 yard game if everyone wasn't hurt by the time he came back
If you're comparing the 2021 performance of a rookie like Zach to the 2021 performance of a 13-year veteran, former Superbowl MVP like Flacco, it says more about the validity of the comparison than it says about Zach. Seriously, you can't conclude ANYTHING about a QB based on a rookie year. Saleh pointed out in his presser this week that a player can show you what they're capable of if they're still trying to figure out where to line up. And you can't compare rookies either. Simms did a nice job explaining that comparing Zach's 2021 performance to the other rookies makes no sense because Zach was actually running a full-on, real NFL offense, while the other rookies were getting a very watered-down assignment. Saleh/LaFleur were giving Zach big-boy assignments, and the other coaches were not doing that with their rookies. None of this means Zach will be great, but it does mean that it's ridiculous to start drawing conclusions -- even preliminary ones -- or making comparisons until a QB learns the job well enough to show what he can do when he actually knows how to do the job. That doesn't happen in the first year.
