The Jets will return to MetLife Stadium for the last time this season on Sunday to face the Dolphins.
It feels like three years ago, but it was just a little over three months ago when the Jets would experience the high point of the 2024 season at MetLife on Sept. 19.
The team ripped the Patriots, 24-3, on “Thursday Night Football.”
Seemingly everything went their way that night. The offense put up 400 points. The defense only allowed a field goal.
The Jets won their second straight game to improve to 2-1, and it felt like they were about to take off.
“It felt like we’re clicking, we’re rolling, and this is what’s going to carry us through the rest of the season,” center Joe Tippmann said this week. “That’s where I was at.”
The Jets have won just two games since and enter Sunday’s game at 4-12.
Head coach Robert Saleh was fired less than two weeks after that Thursday night victory.
General manager Joe Douglas was fired two months after the game.
The Jets are about to embark on an offseason of change after a season that fell apart following that promising game against the Patriots, a team they have rarely beaten in recent history.
The Jets followed the victory over the Patriots with a shocking 10-9 loss to the Broncos that infuriated owner Woody Johnson.
A week later, they lost to the Vikings in London and Saleh was out.
The Jets would lose five straight games before registering their third victory of the season.
“It’s very stunning,” quarterback Aaron Rodgers said this week. “You just wonder if you get down the what-if game, some things that happen, you play better against Denver or if we hit the long field goal how that changes things. Obviously, the Buffalo game I think was even a bigger kind of crux point there, where they make the [coaching] change after the long Minnesota trip we come back we played pretty damn good on that Monday night [against the Bills].”
Rodgers said things could have gone much differently if they could have found a way to win that night.
“If we win that game, we are 3-3,” Rodgers said. “We’re tied for the division lead, this team looks a lot different, I think, confidence wise. Part of this is the confidence that the guys have week to week, most of those opportunities that we had and other games where I had the ball in my hands late in the game where we didn’t get it done or games we could have turned the momentum would have changed things. Would we be playing for a playoff spot? Who knows?”
