Photo courtesy of Keith Allison, Wikipedia
The New York Jets have had less-than-stellar season, falling to an embarrassing 3-9 after Monday night’s loss to the Colts.
The Jets came in with high expectations after finishing 10-6 last year, although they just narrowly missed the playoffs.
In the first game of the season, the Jets sacked Bengals’ quarterback Andy Dalton seven times – despite the loss, things were looking decent for the Jets.
As part of what seemed like a tough schedule entering the 2016 season, they are not 3-9 because they’re playing better teams – actually, they are playing better teams, but that’s because the Jets are simply just a very bad football team.
Monday’s loss officially eliminated them from playoff contention, so the Jets will be watching the playoffs from home for the sixth season in a row.
Monday night’s game against the Colts seemed to be one last bit of hope, but when Ryan Fitzpatrick was benched for the third time of the season after the first half, and the hardest tackles of the night came from two New Jersey State Troopers after two presumably very intoxicated fans streaked down the field, all hope is now lost, along with pretty much every game the Jets have played this year.
With just four games left in the season that cannot come and go soon enough, there are now many question marks regarding the Jets.
While most fans want to focus on who the Jets will pick in the 2017 NFL Draft, they still have a lot to worry about.
Head coach Todd Bowles is in his second season with the Jets, but this season has obviously been quite abysmal.
Whether it’s simply lack of talent or not, the lack of effort shown by the Jets has fallen to Bowles.
One of those who have shown close to zero effort has been former fan favorite Darrelle Revis.
After winning Super Bowl XLIX with the Jets’ division rival, the New England Patriots, Revis came back to New York in the 2015 offseason for his second stint for Gang Green on a five-year, $70 million contract.
This season, not only is he getting burned by almost every receiver he lines up across from, but his lackadaisical play throughout the year earned him lots of boos from many of the Jets crowd on Monday, especially since Colts’ receive TY Hilton was wide open on several occasions throughout the game.
However, the bigger issue for the Jets (yes the Jets have bigger issues), is who will be playing quarterback for them next season.
The Ryan Fitzpatrick experiment has seemingly ended – Bryce Petty will start the last four games of the season, barring any injuries, and Fitzpatrick will be a free agent next season.
Petty has not yet shown much signs that he can succeed in the NFL, and this year’s second-round draft pick, Christian Hackenberg, struggled in the preseason and is not ready to take of the sport’s best.
There have been rumors swirling around that the Jets could make a trade for Cowboys’ quarterback Tony Romo, and the Boys have found their QB of the Cowboys in Dak Prescott, but Romo has failed to stay healthy for the last several seasons.
The only bright spot for the Jets seems to be that they will most likely have a high draft pick in the NFL Draft.
But there are a lot of questions to be answered, unfortunately, and some of these questions might not be answered by Week 1 of next season, considering the Jets have been looking for a good quarterback for quite a long time.
It has been a long suffering for the New York Jets and their fans, and there do not seem to be many immediate answers.
rmorik@ramapo.edu
