Antwan Staley: The Jets find themselves with a 2-6 record after embarrassing loss to Patriots

FOXBOROUGH — Before being traded to the Jets in the spring of 2023, Aaron Rodgers went on a four-night darkness retreat as a method of self-reflection.

That darkness eventually led to him wanting to continue playing and leaving the Packers for the Jets.

Now, eight games into the 2024 season, Rodgers and the Jets are in a dark place.

Following Rodgers’ Achilles tear and recovery, the Jets were supposed to be contending for a Super Bowl championship and ending their 13-year playoff drought, which is the longest in North American sports. But at 2-6 and in last place in the AFC East, the Jets are closer to having the top pick in the 2025 NFL Draft than vying for a championship in January.

Gang Green is currently on a five-game losing streak and lost an embarrassing 25-22 game on Sunday to the Patriots, who many consider the worst team in the NFL.

“The NFL is hard,” Rodgers said after the game. “It’s hard to win. Harder when you make it difficult on yourself.

“Offensively we can’t worry about what else happens. We’ve got to be efficient. We’ve got to make the most of the opportunities. Again, there was yards left out there, opportunities left out there.

“Can’t leave it up to – we’ve got to score touchdowns. Can’t leave it up to Greg [Zuerlein] or try and pin it on Greg. We had a lot of opportunities to score 30, to make it a two-score game at times and didn’t do it.”

Sunday’s game between the Jets and the Patriots can be described as a comedy of errors. New England just happened to be the better team.

The Jets made several mental mistakes on the field and off it. Jets interim coach Jeff Ulbrich used all three of his timeouts in the first quarter when he said the team wasn’t up to par from an “operations standpoint.” In addition, penalties have continued to plague the Jets, and they had eight for 55 yards on the day.

Players were confused on particular plays, including the Patriots’ game-winning drive, when Sauce Gardner allowed Patriots wide receiver Kayshon Boutte to catch a 34-yard pass, allowing New England to win the game in the final seconds. This was without Patriots quarterback Drake Maye, who was out due to a concussion he suffered in the second quarter.

“I knew they were in a score situation,” Gardner said. “I played upfield shoulder. It was a pressure.

“We call it an issue play, he had to vacate the post to help on a race route. I didn’t know the post was going to get vacated. He vacated the post, the quarterback underthrew it and he caught the ball. Several. It was Cover 0 and it was a fire zone coverage, but the quarterback underthrew the ball.”

Rhamondre Stevenson eventually scored the game-winning one-yard touchdown that sealed the victory for New England. Former Giants and Jets coach Bill Parcells said, “You are what your record says you are.” And with nine games left in the season, the Jets record says they are one of the worst teams in the NFL.

“It hurts, and it’s hard,” Ulbrich said. “You get the process right and you get the energy right, and when it still doesn’t produce the results that you want, it’s just not the feedback that you want to give your players, your team, your organization.

“This was more than energy because I thought the energy was fine. That was not where we fell short. Where we fell short was in the execution, especially in the critical moments of this game. So we’ve got to get that right. Until that gets right, nothing else really matters.”

When Jets owner Woody Johnson fired Robert Saleh and made Ulbrich the interim coach on Oct. 8, he told reporters he believed the change would “bring new energy and positivity and will lead to more wins starting now.” That has not been the case at all.

The Jets have lost five consecutive games and now find themselves in a bad nightmare that the team cannot escape. Johnson’s firing of Saleh appeared to be a panic move when it was made, and that remains true.

By firing the CEO of the Jets football team in Saleh, more responsibility has been placed at Ulbrich’s feet. The problem is that he had zero head coaching experience before this and is now trying to do two jobs simultaneously.

Because of that, the Jets’ defense has slipped, and it doesn’t look like one of the best units as it did in five games this season with Saleh. In their three losses without Saleh, the Jets’ defense has allowed 28.3 points per game, which is the 31st in the league during that span.

It remains to be seen if the Jets can find their way out of their darkness. They have a Thursday Night Football game against the Texans on Halloween. They also have games against the Cardinals and Colts before their bye week.

Some people don’t understand how important decisions are until they make a bad one. Johnson made a catastrophic decision to fire Saleh, and he will likely regret it as the Jets look like they are headed towards yet another rebuild since he became owner in 2000.

“This is a moment of darkness, and we understand that the outside world is going to get really loud right now,” Ulbrich said. “But the only thing I know in life is that when it gets dark and it gets hard, that you work and you point the finger at yourself and you look inward and you figure out what can I do better from an individual standpoint.

“If we do that collectively, which I believe we will, that’s your only opportunity to dig yourself out of this. That’s your only opportunity to improve and fix some of these wrongs. That’s where we’re fortunate that the character of this locker room, I think they’re going to demonstrate who they are.”