by The New York Jets have not reached the playoffs since their second consecutive AFC Championship Game appearance in 2010, when they suffered a 24-19 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. The football world believed the drought would end after acquiring four-time NFL MVP Aaron Rodgers from the Green Bay Packers ahead of the 2023 season.
Those hopes were crushed four times in that year’s opener against the Buffalo Bills when Rodgers tore his Achilles tendon and was lost for the remainder of the campaign. The Jets went 7-10 with Zach Wilson, Trevor Siemian and Tim Boyle manning the quarterback position.
With Rodgers set to leave in 2024, the experts once again called for New York’s postseason dry spell to be shortened to 13 years. The club lost its season opener against the defending NFC champion San Francisco 49ers 32-19, but responded with wins over the Tennessee Titans (24-17) and New England Patriots (24-3), and with most of the rest of the schedule. with favorable matchups, making the playoffs certainly seemed like an achievable goal.
The SportsLine projection model certainly thought so. The model, which simulates every NFL game 10,000 times and has won more than $7,000 for $100 players on top-rated NFL picks since its inception, gave the Jets a 78% chance of qualifying for the postseason after their dominant win over the AFC East. rival patriots in week 3.
However, that was the last time New York left the field with a positive result. The team squandered a fourth-quarter lead, dropping a 10-9 decision at home to a Denver Broncos squad with rookie Bo Nix at quarterback in Week 4 before being defeated 23-17 by the then-undefeated Minnesota Vikings in London.
According to the model’s simulations, the Jets’ playoff prospects dropped to 59% after the loss to Denver and 45% after the setback to Minnesota.
A 23-20 home loss to Buffalo on a late field goal in Week 6 followed, dropping the postseason prospects to 37%. Then New York allowed Pittsburgh to score the final 31 points in a 37–15 thrashing a week later, and its chances of making the playoffs plummeted to 18%.
As 7-point favorites in New England last Sunday, the Jets were expected to halt their four-game skid against the 1-6 Patriots, who entered on a six-game losing streak of their own. The Jets led 13-7 at halftime and faced a New England offense that lost rookie QB Drake Maye to a concussion early in the second quarter.
The lead changed four times in the second half before Rhamondre Stevenson recorded his second rushing touchdown of the game with 22 seconds left in the fourth quarter, and the Patriots were successful on their two-point conversion attempt to go up 25–22. On a day when it used its three first-half timeouts in the first quarter, saw kicker Greg Zuerlein continue to struggle and botched a two-point attempt late in the fourth, New York couldn’t get into position for a tie game. -goal attempt.
With that loss, the Jets fell to 2-6 and are ranked 15th in the AFC, ahead of only the 1-6 Titans. The team has made numerous attempts to right the ship, but none have worked, and it heads into a Week 9 home matchup with the AFC South-leading Houston Texans (5-2) on Thursday Night Football in a slide of five matches that the SportsLine’s projection model gave a chance of occurrence of 2.2%.
New York fired head coach Robert Saleh after the loss to the Vikings and replaced him on an interim basis with defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich. It also made a change in its offensive approach, taking play-calling duties away from coordinator Nathaniel Hackett and handing them to passing game coordinator Todd Downing.
The Jets acquired six-time Pro Bowl receiver Davante Adams from the Las Vegas Raiders after Week 6, but Rodgers’ former Green Bay Packers teammate has made just seven catches for 84 yards in his first two games with the club. Star linebacker Haason Reddick, who was acquired from the Philadelphia Eagles in an offseason trade, made his debut in Week 8 after ending a holdout that began prior to training camp and was a non-factor while playing primarily in third down situations.
Local and national media shamed the Jets on Monday, declaring the season and the entire Rodgers era a complete failure. The model seems to agree, as the simulations give New York a 9% chance of qualifying for the postseason after the embarrassing loss at New England.
Given their next opponent, the Jets likely won’t be able to stop the bleeding on Thursday. But even if they beat the Texans, the model says they would only make the playoffs 14% of the time. Even if New York were to follow a win against Houston with victories over the Arizona Cardinals and Indianapolis Colts before the bye game in Week 11, the postseason odds would increase to just 26%.
Unexpected things happen regularly in the NFL, but according to the model, the prospects of the Jets putting together a three-game winning streak now are just 19%.
However, the model calls for an exciting battle on Thursday between the Texans and Jets, who are surprisingly favored by several sportsbooks. But it is not one of the seven games with A-grade picks based on model simulations for the ninth week of the season. You can find the top Week 9 NFL picks at SportsLine.
