Getty New York Jets Hall of Famer Joe Namath smiling about a brighter future!
It has been a long offseason for the New York Jets filled with hype and hope.
With training camp getting underway for NFL teams across the league, folks are starting to look ahead towards the 2021 season.
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Times Are a Changing on 1 Jets Drive
Last season for the Jets seems like a lifetime ago. It featured a different head coach, a strange aura, and a lot of losing.
The green and white finished 2-14 last year. That will go down as one of the worst campaigns in team history. Although it isn’t all that bad, because it opens the door for a beautiful comeback story.
Bleacher Report’s Kristopher Knox should probably be crowned the new conductor of the 2021 Jets hype train. In his latest column, he projected which NFL teams would be the most improved from a win total perspective and Gang Green earned the top billing:
“If Wilson can be a capable starter out of the gate, the Jets could push for a playoff spot. Saleh is a well-respected coach, and it’s hard to believe he won’t be an upgrade over Adam Gase—who went just 9-23 in two seasons. Playing in a tough AFC East will be an obstacle, though the New England Patriots no longer dominate the division as they once did. It’s realistic to think that New York can make the sort of leap that Miami did a year ago.”
Better Than All the Rest
In the B/R article, they listed the three most likely teams to have the biggest win total turnaround:
- Jacksonville Jaguars: 1-15 to 6-11 (five-game differential)
- San Francisco 49ers: 6-10 to 11-6 (five-game differential)
- Jets: 2-14 to 9-8 (seven-game differential)
In a weird way, the Jets have Adam Gase to thank for this potential turnaround. Without that horrid 2020 campaign, this potential remarkable journey in 2021 wouldn’t have been possible.
Gang Green topped the other two teams on the list by two games with an overall seven-game differential. 2-14 was bad enough to earn the second overall pick in the 2021 NFL draft. A 9-8 record in a brand new 17 game format next season? That could be good enough for playoff contention.
Regardless of what heights this team is able to reach next season, there are plenty of other ways to impress Jets fans.
Score points
In back-to-back years the Jets made history, for all the wrong reasons. They finished 32nd in total offense and if you had to pick words to describe what it looked like you might choose: anemic, disgusting, and unimaginative.
The bar is set so low that if this team can simply score some points and make things exciting, even if there are some losses along the way, the fan base will still be elated.
Be competitive
In Gase’s time as a head coach with both the Miami Dolphins and the Jets, he had more double-digit losses (36) than overall wins (32).
Normally when the green and white lost, they did so emphatically.
Gase was the head coach of the Jets for two years, during the first halves of both of those seasons he was 1-15. How can fans hype themselves up with those kinds of overall records and the general non-competitive nature of these contests? Spoiler alert: they can’t.
Honeymoon period
Anyone that was hired after Gase was destined to have the longest honeymoon period of any NFL coach in recent memory. The fact that it was a highly regarded coach that has the pulse of the locker room in Robert Saleh is gravy.
He hasn’t coached a down yet, so it’s hard to throw expectations around, but entering 2021 the Jets don’t really have any. The national media is overlooking this team and this front office is completely okay with that.
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