There aren’t many people who expected the New York Jets to be a good team entering the 2025 season. Of course, anything can happen in the NFL. There are always teams that surprise. With that said success wasn’t really about finishing the year with a winning record or a Playoff berth.
There were certain things that were important to see from the Jets this season.
One was that the team get better as the season progressed. With so many young and unproven players filling key roles, there was a good chance the team would have a slow start. I’m sure the Jets were hoping it wouldn’t be as bad as the 0-7 it got, but the important thing was for those players to grow the deeper we got into the season.
The Jets also didn’t want to give anything away to their opponent. The Jets surely would lose plenty of games due to their lack of talent. There are different ways to lose, though. You can lose a game while still making your opponent earn it. For a young team that’s easier to swallow than making error after error to essentially give the game away on a silver platter.
The Jets haven’t been a great team over the last month and a half, but it felt like there was an uptick in performance. They entered Week 14 having won 3 of their previous 5 games.
Unfortunately the Jets did not continue the momentum in their brutal 34-10 loss to the Miami Dolphins.
It felt like a game in many ways where the team reverted to the disorganized mess we saw through much of September and October.
The Jets started the game by allowing three touchdowns on their first three defensive series. The Dolphins gashed them in the run game. New York busted coverage after coverage.
Things didn’t go much better on offense.
By the end of the first quarter, undrafted rookie Brady Cook was in at quarterback in place of an injured Tyrod Taylor. Cook looked about as overwhelmed as you would expect from a UDFA rookie seeing his first action without so much the benefit of practice reps to prepare during the week.
When Cook first set foot on the field, the Jets trailed 21-0. The game was effectively over. Cook played very poorly, but there are two saving graces for him. First, the Jets were already out of it before he played. Thus it is tough to blame Cook for the loss. Second, his poor play was to be expected under the circumstances.
The same can’t be said for many others on the Jets team. At the end of this game, I would have a tough time naming many players aside from Isaiah Williams (with yet another punt return touchdown) who I could say played well.
The defensive performance displayed an alarming lack of fundamentals an execution.
You might say the same from the offense. The line lost in the trenches. Breece Hall had a bad game. On the rare instances where Cook actually delivered an accurate pass, Adonai Mitchell, John Metchie, and Mason Taylor turned into drop machines.
A number of young players have shown promise in recent weeks, particularly Mitchell and Metchie. This game amounted to a major step back for them and others.
This game is lost. There’s nothing the Jets can do about it. The hope going forward has to be that what we saw today was a blip on the radar. If this team plays more competitive football over the final four weeks, and young guys bounce back the ugliness of Week 14 will be forgotten quickly.
If we see more games like this, it will be difficult to say the 2025 season accomplished much for the Jets, even considering the low expectations.