Jets face another embarrassment and the future of Robert Saleh’s team becomes more uncertain

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – Garrett Wilson leaned against a locker, clenching his fist and then unclenching it, again and again. He took his left hand and went finger by finger, squeezing each hand as the veins popped. Wilson’s frustration has been simmering for weeks. Now it’s cooking.

It took Wilson three quarters to get his first goal Sunday against the Miami Dolphins.

“I’m aware of it,” Wilson said, interrupting a question before it was finished.

Across the locker room, New York Jets players lamented the team’s poor performance in a 30-0 loss. Wide receiver Allen Lazard went even further.

“I think they just played a better game,” Lazard said. “They outsmarted us, outwitted us.”

Attempt. Scheme.

Wilson did not disagree 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 victory, with all the points coming in an explosive second half for an offense that otherwise had struggled all year. Zach Wilson had his best game. There was a feeling that performances might have saved and secured some jobs for 2024, when Aaron Rodgers will come back to save the day.

The best laid plans are destroyed by outbursts. Jets cornerback DJ Reed called Sunday’s effort a “good old ass.”

Did Reed think the Jets showed enough fight? Not really.

“Honestly, I would say that was the case until the middle of the third quarter,” Reed said. “You could see the energy… and the emotion on the boys’ faces was quite somber throughout the game. I wouldn’t say I was very happy with that.”

The Jets are 5-9. Sunday’s loss – along with several other results in the league – left them out of the playoffs for the 13th straight 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 is losing the locker room, and Saleh is coming dangerously close to the latter. It may already be happening.

The Jets were outclassed by the Dolphins, and it’s not the first time Saleh has been outcoached this season.

“You put together the best possible plan – 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 are struggling 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 eleventh new offensive line in fourteen games against the Dolphins, and it was a disaster from the start. Zach Wilson was bruised and battered all day, and was sacked on the first possession. He was sacked a total of four times, hit seven times and retreated 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 was not yet evaluated for a concussion, according to ESPN. Later in the game, Wilson was ruled out due to a concussion. Late in the fourth quarter, The Athletics saw Wilson enter the X-ray room. Saleh said after the game that Wilson had a concussion. His status for next week is unclear.

Zach Wilson goes to the X-ray room. #Jets pic.twitter.com/Z4wr5H262b

— Zack Rosenblatt (@ZackBlatt) December 17, 2023

When Wilson was initially reluctant to return to the starting lineup a few weeks ago, one reason was the fear of getting hurt behind the offensive line. His fears were clearly coming true. The Jets’ offensive line was perhaps the most obvious problem the team had on Sunday, which Saleh repeatedly pointed out during his post-game press conference.

“Yes, when you get beat up from the front, yes, it’s not – it doesn’t feel good,” he said in response to a question about whether Sunday’s performance was “embarrassing”.

But the problems go deeper than that. The Jets aren’t the only team in the NFL that has been devastated by injuries to the offensive line, or whose starting quarterback has gone down with a season-ending injury. The Bengals are 3-1 with Jake Browning since he was tapped to fill in for Joe Burrow. The Browns are 2-1 with Joe Flacco and 9-5 overall despite losing both their starting tackles and their best backup tackle. 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 and enable their players to succeed even when they are outsmarted. The Jets don’t – and that’s with one of the NFL’s best defenses, an elite wide receiver (Wilson) and an explosive running back (Breece Hall).

This team largely wasted a great season on that defense, though even the defense struggled against Miami. Wide receiver Jaylen Waddle burned Reed on a 60-yard touchdown and finished with 142 yards. Running back Raheem Mostert scored two touchdowns and the Dolphins scored 30 points even without Tyreek Hill playing.

And then there’s Wilson, one of the NFL’s most talented wide receivers, who is fading. He watched from the sideline as Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel open-schemed Waddle, something Nathaniel Hackett hasn’t been able to do all season for the Jets.

“I think they have a lot of pieces in their favor that make it easier to plan,” Wilson said. “Tyreek goes down, they put Waddle in and he goes for 150 (yards). And that’s the ball I loved. But that’s not how it will 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 has had a harder time hiding his frustration, especially Sunday, when he was targeted just four times and cameras caught him on the sideline animated by his irritation.

Garrett Wilson and Aaron Rodgers have a chopping session on the sidelines pic.twitter.com/hgXZEMbn0f

— NFL on CBS 🏈 (@NFLonCBS) December 17, 2023

“I mean, it seems like we’re doing it inadvertently, to be honest,” Wilson said. “That’s my mentality. It’s easy. I feel like that doesn’t have to be the case. But it was. I think I need to fix it. I need to figure out how to get involved in the first quarter. Maybe it will start practicing soon. Don’t know. I have to show something, I have to do something. They have a good plan for us. They did a good job of coming after us and that made it difficult. That’s how it was and I have to be able to adapt. Don’t know. I have to find out.”

It’s not Wilson’s job to figure this out. That’s on Saleh and Hackett.

Now there are three games left in the season, and players are starting to say the quiet part out loud. The truth: The Jets were not prepared for Sunday’s game.

Against the Texans last week, the Jets offense was productive. Otherwise, by most metrics, this was one of the worst offenses in franchise history, and the worst third-down offense in recorded NFL history. At halftime, the Jets had accumulated just four net offensive yards – and negative -10 net passing yards. At the end of the game, the Jets had gained a total of 103 yards and Zach Wilson and Trevor Siemian combined for 80 passing yards.

Think about this: Saleh has refused (and will continue to do so) to make a change to his offensive play-calling structure, leaving Hackett untouchable, not just because of his relationship with Rodgers – but because Saleh doesn’t believe Hackett is responsible for the Jets’ problems on offense. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Eagles are 10-3 and just benched defensive coordinator Sean Desai for Matt Patricia.

Those 103 yards by the Jets ranked fourth in franchise history, and three of the five lowest yardage totals have come under Saleh’s watch. Once Zach Wilson was sacked on the opening possession, it felt like it was going to be a long afternoon, and it was. On the next drive, the Jets attempted a fake punt on fourth-and-4, a direct attack on safety Ashtyn Davis, which predictably backfired. By the time Wilson left the game, the Jets trailed 17-0. At halftime it was 24-0 and after the third quarter it was 27-0.

“They executed more than we did,” cornerback Sauce Gardner said. ‘I don’t know what to say. They outsmarted us.”

One wonders if Saleh’s job is on the line next week. If the Jets lose at home to a 4-10 Washington Commanders team, this could truly be the end of the road. It would be difficult for owner Woody Johnson to turn things around with this coaching staff.

“It’s disappointing,” Saleh said. “From the first series of the year until now it has been a constant battle. I really appreciate it from our guys. We still have three games to go to finish strong. As bad as we feel right now, we have to remember that we felt pretty good last week too. We’ve got a good Washington team coming in that’s going to lick their chops, so we’ve got to take care of business and get ready to play that team.”

When the Los Angeles Chargers lost to the Baltimore Ravens in Week 12, coach Brandon Staley said 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 lost 63-21 to the Las Vegas Raiders and Staley was fired the next day.

Has Saleh lost the dressing room?

Come back next week.

(Photo: Megan Briggs/Getty Images)