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As Robert Saleh holds on to Jets offense, players say: ‘We have to do something’

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LAS VEGAS — The New York Jets’ season has turned into a Mad Libs game. Maybe change a few nouns or adjectives here and there, but in the end the story is still the same.

The defense is playing well. The offense cannot complete drives. The offense does not enter the end zone. Zach Wilson makes some confusing decisions. Greg Zuerlein is having a busy day, making field goals, the only source of offense. Thomas Morstead is having a busy day in punting as the offense can’t move the ball consistently. Penalties kill drives. The defense is doing its job. The Jets are still in the game at the end. Then it’s over.

Robert Saleh addresses the self-inflicted wounds in his post-match press 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 just 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 for.

Rinse, repeat. It’s all the same – and Saleh appears to have no desire to make the kind of change that could make the offense competent. He won’t bench Wilson. He won’t take the play-calling away from offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett. The Jets lost 16-12 on Sunday to the Raiders, a team so dysfunctional that 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 who started as quarterback. And it was the same as always.

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If Saleh doesn’t take the reins of the Jets offense and do what needs to be done to fix them before the season fades into thin air – another year without the playoffs, like so many before – then perhaps the players you have to take control of the situation yourself.

“They asked me today: Are you okay with talking to the media?” tight end Tyler Conklin said after the game. ‘I said: yes, I will speak, but what do you expect me to say? That’s the thing, it’s a broken record at this point. We have to find out. We can’t keep coming here and doing this over and over again. We let the defense down, we let 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 that stuff, but there’s really no good answer to give you other than we have to figure it out.”

The Jets scored all field goals on their first three drives on Sunday night. They then punted on five straight drives, 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 scored thirteen offensive touchdowns in nine games. Wilson has thrown one touchdown pass in his last five games and five for the season. By comparison, Josh Dobbs has accounted for six touchdowns in two games in 12 days since being traded to the Vikings. At the end of Sunday’s game, the Jets had five punts, four field goals, eight penalties, fourteen 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.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Wilson said. “I’m tired of this, man. I want to play better. The offense wants to play better. Every week we try to make it happen. It’s frustrating.”

The first words out of Saleh’s mouth at his post-match press conference were the same words he said virtually every week, win or lose. All anyone wants to know is why his offense has somehow gotten worse since last year, when he parted ways with Mike LaFleur as his offensive coordinator and revamped his offensive coaching staff.

He has made many apologies. The Jets have been unable to find solutions.

“The hardest thing for me is when I watch the game, it’s easy to look at the play-caller, the head coach and the quarterback,” Saleh said. “But we move the ball. Today we moved the ball. But it’s just penalties, penalties on the O-line, penalties on the tight end, penalties on the running back. Just stupid, stupid things that we have to clean up or it won’t change. But we can clean it up and at least give ourselves a chance to play clean football, to see what it looks like. I still believe it will look good.”

The Jets reached the red zone once on Sunday and did not convert. That’s the expectation right now for the NFL’s worst red zone offense. But the defense once again did its job and once again a largely impressive performance was lost. The Raiders were 5 of 15 on third down, quarterback Aidan O’Connell threw for 153 yards and the Jets held star wide receiver Davante Adams without a catch in the second half. They forced two turnovers, including a forced fumble late in the fourth quarter to quell a potential scoring drive by the Raiders. Then Zach Wilson turned around and gave it back to them when he telegraphed a pass to wide receiver Allen Lazard, allowing linebacker Robert Spillane to jump in front of it for what would become a game-deciding interception.

Wilson wasn’t the problem on Sunday, but he remains a problem. Wilson threw for 263 yards, but 92 came on the final two drives. The play-calling did him no favors; at times it seemed as if Hackett was afraid to let Wilson do anything other than hand it off or control it. Breece Hall had 47 yards on three catches but wasn’t targeted until the fourth quarter, even though he’s the most dynamic player the Jets have with the ball in his hands.

“It’s something we should definitely look at,” Saleh said.

The Jets defense — which, according to TruMedia, ranks third in the NFL in expected points added, and seventh in points allowed — is being held to an impossible standard. If it gives up points, or doesn’t score points itself, the Jets are likely to lose. They know it too. This is not the defense of a 4-5 team. It’s a playoff-caliber defense pinned down with a mediocre corrective offense.

“I’m not going to say it’s surprising,” cornerback Sauce Gardner said of the 4-5 record. “We don’t play complementary football. It’s just a fact. It’s not a surprise at all.”

The defense knows there is no margin for error when this offense is played this way.

“Yeah, but that’s how we’re coached,” Gardner said. “The coaching is that if they can’t score, they won’t win. If you embrace that, we will always put it on us.”

Saleh may not want to make a change, but it sounds like the players are ready. This week, that could come in the form of a “players only” meeting, the clichéd get-together for teams that are falling apart.

“Yes, it’s all on the table,” Garrett Wilson said. “We’re trying to figure it out. I see something like this happening soon, because it has to. I’m going to take it upon myself. We have some guys in this locker room that know how to lead and we’ll see what it’s like traveling back to New York, which we’re talking about. We have to do something.”

Conklin went even further.

“We’re definitely at the point where something has to be done,” Conklin said. “We can’t start next week and roll the ball out there and hope it gets better. I don’t know what to do, but we have to do something this week to get on the same page.”

It’s now week 11. The Jets have played nine games. The offense is now worse than before. This should be a playoff team. Instead, the Jets lose to the Raiders and barely beat the Giants.

“It’s frustrating as hell,” Conklin said.

(Photo of Garrett Wilson and Nate Hobbs: Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)

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