On a rainy day in New Jersey, one ominous cloud hovered over the Jets, in the form of a question, tracking them from sideline to sideline, end zone to end zone.
Are they the one NFL team, under these conditions, capable of blowing this game?
The conditions had nothing to do with the miserable weather, and everything to do with an opponent just as dreadful as the home team. In the first quarter alone, the Cleveland Browns surrendered a 99-yard kickoff return for a touchdown to Kene Nwangwu, and minutes later a 74-yard punt return for a touchdown to Isaiah Williams. The Jets’ lead was only 14-7, but then again, nobody could possibly benefit from two explosive special-teams plays inside the game’s first 10 minutes and still end up on the short end of the final score …
While playing against the 2-6 Browns …
Who are quarterbacked by Dillon Gabriel …
All while playing at home.
Of course, if NFL fans were asked to name the one NFL franchise creative enough to pull defeat from the jaws of this victory, the Jets would win that poll in a landslide. While a dramatic victory over the Bengals spared the Jets from dragging an 0-8 record into Sunday’s game, it did little to enhance their reputation.
And hey, with the score 17-17 entering the fourth quarter, what right-minded Jets fan could feel secure about anything with their quarterback, Justin Fields, standing there with 12 passing yards to his name?
But five days after they traded away Sauce Gardner and Quinnen Williams, ushering in what feels like their 40th rebuild of the last 50 years, the Jets did something that transcends their position near the top of next spring’s draft: They worked the problem and figured out how to win the game, by a score of 27-20.
They let the other guys implode in the final minutes.
They let the other head coach rip off his headset on the last possession while muttering the words, Oh my God.
Kevin Stefanski couldn’t believe that Cameron Thomas jumped offside under a ticking clock on fourth down, with the Jets having no intention of snapping the ball, just as he couldn’t believe that Devin Bush committed a holding penalty on third-and-16 four plays earlier, when it appeared Fields had no intention of throwing the ball.
The Jets always lead the league in those unforced errors. That’s why they are about to miss the playoffs for a 15th straight season, the longest streak in North America’s major professional sports.
This absurd run of futility during a time of an expanded playoff field is the reason the Jets made their latest blockbuster trades. Everyone knows they now have five first-round picks over the next two years, including three in a 2027 draft billed as a monster class.
Just as everyone knows that serial losing has set the Jets up with seemingly great picks in past drafts, only for continued losing to force yet another teardown.
After Breece Hall raced 42 yards into the end zone off a Fields screen pass — a perfect play call against the blitz, Fields said — to give the quarterback a total of 54 passing yards, Hall maintained that the team’s two-game winning streak was “less about learning how to win and just being tired of losing. So I think that’s probably the biggest thing … everybody is tired of losing.”
Hall had a big day, but he fumbled on that one. The Jets have been tired of losing for years, but that feeling alone never inspired them to do much about it. They have long lacked the leadership, discipline and the extreme attention to detail required to win at the margins in a league defined by parity.
Maybe Aaron Glenn, who as a Jets player went from 1-15 one season to 12-4 and a place in the AFC Championship Game two years later, can pull off here what his old coach, Bill Parcells, did in the 1990s.
Maybe what went down in these last two games amounts to the start of a program that will defy every vile thing said about the Jets since their last trip to the playoffs in 2010.
“We’re trying to build something,” Glenn said after his first victory at MetLife Stadium. “There has to be a foundation that has to be set. … If it’s truly stable, then you can sustain winning. And that’s what we’re trying to accomplish.”
Glenn knows he himself has a lot to learn. Among other things: He needs to improve his podium game, as evidenced by last week’s claim that, as much as he’s talked about Jets fans being proud of his team, he never said they would be proud of his team right away.
Glenn was back to talking about that earned customer pride Sunday, conceding that he needs time to get there. “We’re still a long way from where we need to be,” the coach said. “But we’re trending in the right direction.”
The same can’t be said of the 2-8 Giants, who look more like the Jets than the Jets do when it comes to blowing games. Though they will almost certainly be starting over next year with a new head coach (and possibly a new GM), the Giants do at least employ a young quarterback who will be a star in this league … as long as the Giants can protect him and help him avoid concussions.
The Jets need to find their own Jaxson Dart in the draft. Along those lines, some of their fans might be worried sick that this newfound winning might hurt their chances of doing just that. They’ve apparently forgotten that taking a quarterback early — Sam Darnold, No. 3 overall, 2018 … Zach Wilson, No. 2 overall, 2021 — doesn’t guarantee a damn thing.
Breece Hall and the Jets celebrated a victory for a second straight game. (Vincent Carchietta / Imagn Images)
Yes, the Jets will need far more than a superstar special-teams coach, Chris Banjo, to get back to the Super Bowl for the first time since January 1969. But you don’t have to review where Tom Brady was drafted (199th overall) or where Joe Montana was drafted (82nd) to understand that franchise quarterbacks don’t always get picked at the very top of the first round. Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen weren’t drafted in the top five. Lamar Jackson wasn’t drafted in the top 30.
Dart wasn’t drafted in the top 20.
The Jets will have their chances to finally land a franchise quarterback next spring, or the spring after that. Meanwhile, they need to continue playing the lights-out football that Will McDonald IV played against the Browns. The kind that Breece Hall played after he wasn’t traded. The kind that Quincy Williams played after his brother was traded and after he was demoted by a coach unafraid to send multiple messages to singular players.
Above all else, the Jets have to develop a talent for winning. Being tired of losing has never been good enough.