NFL

New York Jets 2024 NFL Season Preview and Picks

Photo of Scott Kacsmar Scott Kacsmar31/07/2024 - 10:53 am
Premier League Abroad: Aaron Rodgers could throw a London touchdown
(Photo by Fred Kfoury III/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Just the thought of the New York Jets is depressing because we spent all that time a year ago hyping up and speculating about Aaron Rodgers on a team with a strong defense, and it was over after four snaps. A torn Achilles on opening night meant we had to watch six NFL island games with Zach Wilson and Tim Boyle at quarterback.

Now what? Do we just rerun last year’s preview, published a year to the date, and account for Rodgers being another year older and coming off the most serious injury of his career?

Expectations are still relatively high for the Jets even though head coach Robert Saleh is 18-33 (.353), on the verge of being fired if this doesn’t work out, and the team’s 13-season playoff drought is by far the longest in the league. The next closest team is Denver at eight seasons.

But the Jets are +1800 at sportsbooks to win the Super Bowl, which is tied with Dallas for the ninth-highest odds.

Crazier things have happened, but the first order of business is competing in the toughest division race with the Bills (+165 at FanDuel) and Dolphins (+220) coming off consecutive playoff appearances. The Jets (+170) are right in the odds, but will the offense be able to hang with those teams in the AFC East?

We look back at a doomed 2023, the key offseason changes, the old quarterback dilemma, and the best Jets bets for 2024.

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2023 Season Recap: Four Snaps

It was a tough 2023 season for the league when it came to quarterback injuries, but the biggest one came in Week 1 when Aaron Rodgers tore his Achilles against the Bills after four snaps. It’s hard to overcome that, but you can argue the Jets still should have been better than they were on offense.

J-E-T-S: Just End the Season Instead of Watching This Offense

We can safely say that Zach Wilson, the No. 2 pick in the 2021 NFL draft, was a bust for the Jets. They traded him to Denver this offseason after he got his final shot to prove any worth following Rodgers’ injury.

Wilson’s QBR was 30.6, the worst in the league, and the craziest thing is that was still higher than backups Trevor Siemian (14.4) and Tim Boyle (10.9).

In fact, you could argue the Jets were the worst offense in the league in a 2023 season with several contenders:

  • The Jets finished dead last in yards per drive and were next to last in points per drive.
  • No offense gained fewer first downs.
  • The 2023 Jets had the lowest third-down conversion rate (26.0%) in the NFL in the last eight seasons.
  • The Jets were last in red zone touchdown percentage (32.4%), and their 12 red zone touchdowns were six fewer than the next worst team (Carolina).
  • The Jets turned the ball over 33 times (third most), including a league-high 18 lost fumbles.

On the bright side, at least that fumble luck should regress to the mean in 2024.

But these are troubling numbers for an offense where the leading wide receiver (Garrett Wilson), tight end (Tyler Conklin), and running back (Breece Hall) played in all 17 games. With Rodgers out, his former receivers he recruited like Allen Lazard and Randall Cobb proved to be of no use to the Jets.

It’s another eyesore for offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett, who was coming off that season in Denver as the head coach where the Broncos scored a league-low 16.9 points per game. The 2023 Jets were even worse at 15.8 points per game.

What Ever Happened to the “Run the Ball and Play Great Defense” Identity?

All this to waste one of the finest defenses in the league as the Jets finished No. 2 in yards per drive and No. 4 in points per drive despite getting almost no help from the offense in sustaining drives and keeping them out of bad field position.

We get it, the quarterback was lost after four snaps. But that gives you many weeks to come up with a plan, and the usual plan in this situation is to develop into an offense that runs the ball, limits the exposure and mistakes of the quarterback, and plays great defense. Become one of those “boring” teams because you can still win games that way.

But the Jets did not have the horses up front to control the ground game, and that likely would have shown up if Rodgers was healthy too. New York finished 28th in carries and its rushing success rate was a putrid 40.5%, the team’s lowest since 2019.

Running back Breece Hall showed some good bursts as a rookie before his injury, but in coming back last year, his success rate fell from 50.0% to 39.5%. His yards per carry dropped from 5.8 to 4.5 and that’s despite having an 83-yard run last season.

Hall was used more as a receiver with 76 catches for 591 yards, but even his receiving success rate (40.0%) ranked 132nd out of 139 qualified players. Success rate is measuring plays that gain at least 40% of needed yards on first down, 60% on second down, and 100% on third and fourth down.

Maybe the days of hiding the quarterback and leading with a 300-carry back are over, but the Jets needed to become that kind of team once Rodgers was lost. Wilson had his best numbers in 2023 when using play-action and playing under center. They should have leaned into those things more.

A winning season was right there for the Jets (7-10), who lost 16-12 to the Raiders, 15-10 to the Patriots, and 13-8 to the Falcons. Those are the kinds of games you have to win when your defense plays that well.

Those are the kind of games the Jets hope to win with Rodgers in 2024.

New York Jets Offseason Review

In case Rodgers gets injured this year, the good news is we don’t have to worry about seeing Zach Wilson anymore. The Jets signed Tyrod Taylor, a competent backup who played for the Giants last year.

But the Jets supplying their old quarterback with some veterans who are no strangers to the blue medical tent is a bit concerning. Even worse, the defense’s biggest addition is holding out and may never play a snap for the Jets.

Toy Sold: Mike Williams (Used; Decent Condition)

The Jets added wide receiver Mike Williams from the Chargers to serve as the No. 2 receiver behind Garrett Wilson. He’s a 6’4” deep threat due to his size more than his speed, and you have to keep in mind he’s about to turn 30 and has been injured in most seasons of his career. Last year he only played 3 games and he’s opened camp on the PUP list.

But you do like his career average of 9.4 yards per target, and it’s not hard to imagine Rodgers looking for him down the field this year. It’s a decent complement to Wilson and there weren’t a ton of great options in free agency.

You can debate if the Jets should have drafted tight end Brock Bowers with the No. 11 pick instead of going offensive line. Bowers has the potential to be the next great tight end, but Rodgers has always been wide receiver-centric in his throwing. He hasn’t elevated the tight ends as much and may not have wanted to see a rookie wait to develop since he’s running low on time here.

Williams will suffice, but let’s not fall in love with the move.

The Retooled Offensive Line

While Rodgers only had 3 dropbacks last year, the troubling thing was the Bills were all over him each time. We can’t possibly extrapolate three snaps to a season but based on the way 2023 went for the Jets up front, it’s reasonable to say this would have been a problem for the team. They had to retool the line.

That means Mekhi Becton, their 2020 first-round pick, is out after a disappointing run that was ruined by injuries. Go figure, he made 16 starts last year while the Jets had nothing worth protecting at quarterback.

Hopefully, the latest tackle the Jets drafted with the No. 11 pick will have better health, but Penn State’s Olumuyiwa Fashanu is not a lock to start this season.

The Jets added Tyron Smith, a likely future Hall of Famer from Dallas, to play left tackle. Smith turns 34 this season but he can still play at a high level. His problem is injuries too as he missed 4 games last year and significantly more in 2020-22. In fact, Smith hasn’t played more than 13 games in any season since 2015, so chances are fair that we’ll see Fashanu get some starts in 2024. Just not likely in Week 1, which you probably don’t want to see anyway with the game in San Francisco. Put the veteran at left tackle.

The Jets added left guard John Simpson, who started every game for the Ravens last season. He hasn’t been good in his career, but he is coming from a run-based offense where he also had to protect for a scrambling quarterback in Lamar Jackson.

Actually, 40% of the offensive line this year should be the 2023 Baltimore line as the Jets also acquired veteran right tackle Morgan Moses. He was with the Jets in 2021 too when he started 16 games. He’s never made a Pro Bowl or anything, but he has been consistently solid and has 144 starts in the NFL.

This is unlikely going to be an elite group, but Rodgers has had much worse before. The bottom line is the offensive line should be better this season for the Jets.

Et Tu, Haason?

The Jets have lost some of their pass rush. Javon Kinlaw (49ers) will look to replace Quinton Jefferson (6.0 sacks last year) at defensive tackle. But the big departure was Bryce Huff, who led the team with 10.0 sacks and went on to sign a 3-year deal with the Eagles.

In response, the Jets sent a conditional third-round pick to the Eagles in April for edge rusher Haason Reddick, who has notched at least 11.0 sacks in each of the last four seasons for the Eagles, Panthers, and Cardinals. He’s basically a hired gun at this point.

But he is not happy about his contract, so Reddick is currently holding out of training camp. We’ll see which side eventually caves in, but the Jets need a pass rusher like Reddick if they are going to be serious about the playoffs.

Stick a consistent pass rusher in there and this defense, led by linebacker C.J. Mosley and corner Sauce Gardner, is good enough to win a championship this season. Maybe the Jets thought they’d get away cheap here by not extending the younger Huff and trading for Reddick, but he is calling their bluff right now.

They better work this out.

This Year’s Narrative: Old Man, Plays at MetLife

For a brief moment in March, Aaron Rodgers was on a shortlist to be Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate in the 2024 US election. Rodgers, who turns 41 in December, would have been one of the youngest vice president nominees in history.

Instead, Rodgers is one of the oldest quarterbacks in NFL history.

Rodgers can become just the seventh quarterback to throw at least 60 passes in a season where he was at least 41 years old. That list contains Warren Moon, Doug Flutie, Vinny Testaverde, Brett Favre, Tom Brady, and Drew Brees. For half of that list, things did not go well that season.

When they were 41, Moon (1997 Seahawks), Brady (2018 Patriots), and Brees (2020 Saints) were still good. A year later, Moon was benched for Jon Kitna, Brees was already retired, and Brady had his worst (and final) season in New England.

Rodgers hopes he can still play at a high level too, but there’s not much margin for error here. Another problem is he’s coming off a major injury. While we just watched Brady play until he was 45, his last (and basically only) major injury was a torn ACL way back in 2008. In general, an Achilles is a tougher injury to come back from at 100% than an ACL. Rodgers was already noticeably slower as a runner in 2022. It helps that he’s not a running back or receiver, but it’s still a major injury and being older does not help.

Dan Marino had maybe the most famous Achilles injury for a quarterback before Rodgers back in 1993 for the Dolphins. He came back in 1994 and had one of his finest seasons, but he was also just 33 years old at the time. Still in his prime with one of the fastest releases ever.

In Rodgers’ case, we have the exact same questions we had a year ago, but with the added concern that he’s going to be 41 and coming off a torn Achilles.

  • How worried should we be that 2022 was his worst season in Green Bay when he set career lows with a 41.3 QBR, 91.1 passer rating, and only averaged 217.4 passing yards? He has now gone six straight starts without throwing multiple touchdown passes, doubling the longest streak of his career.
  • He has gone 23 games without a 300-yard passing game, longer than his second and third-longest career streaks combined.
  • Should we really trust Nathaniel Hackett calling plays given his abysmal coaching job the last two years with the Broncos and Jets? Rodgers swears by him after winning back-to-back MVPs in 2020-21 in Green Bay, but the recent results have been so bad for Hackett’s offenses.
  • Can you literally ever trust the Jets to have a good offense since the 1970 merger?

Rodgers was a wild card last year, and he’s an even bigger one this year. He reportedly won’t play in the preseason at all either, something he did last season, throwing a touchdown to Wilson in his lone appearance. Now it appears the only summer action we’ll see between Rodgers and Wilson are these videos of them arguing at training camp.

Again, time is of the essence with this team. They don’t have a couple of years to figure it out, and Saleh certainly hasn’t earned any longer of a grace period to keep his job if this team continues to lose.

Remember, all those past greats like Joe Montana (1993 Chiefs), Brett Favre (2009 Vikings), Peyton Manning (2012 Broncos), and Tom Brady (2020 Buccaneers) all had their new team in the divisional round of the playoffs or better in their first season. Brady won a Super Bowl with Tampa (at Rodgers’ expense), Montana and Favre lost Conference Championship Games, and Manning had his Broncos in the Super Bowl in his second season.

Rodgers is a four-time MVP, so he definitely is in that tier of quarterback and should come with the highest of expectations. Even Matthew Stafford, who had no playoff wins in 12 years with Detroit, went to the Rams and immediately won a Super Bowl in 2021.

But at least the Rams had been building towards that with Sean McVay. These are the Jets, the team that hasn’t been in the playoffs since the 2010 season. This is Aaron Rodgers, the quarterback who hasn’t been in a Super Bowl since the 2010 season.

Are they a perfect match or not? We thought we’d get the answer last year, but four freaking snaps.

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Best Bets for the 2024 Jets

Even just one complete game from Rodgers on the Jets last year would make this so much easier to predict.

One thing is clear: I’m not endorsing Rodgers for MVP this year. However, Comeback Player of the Year seems like a no-brainer if he has even a moderately good season at his age. Joe Burrow is also up there in the odds, but nothing unusual happened to him in 2023. This would be a bigger deal for Rodgers to come back and play well, so I do agree with the favorite for Comeback Player of the Year being Rodgers.

Now for the final task of picking the AFC East winner. We said earlier this week in previews for the Bills and Dolphins that all three of these teams can win 10 or 11 games this year in what should be one of the best division races in history.

The Jets are favored to go over 9.5 wins this year, which could be good enough for at least a wild card. But what does the schedule look like?

  • Wildly enough, the NFL has recreated last year’s scenario with Rodgers opening on Monday night against a contender in the 49ers, his nemesis. That’s a really tough start.
  • The Jets finally ended their brutal losing streak to the Patriots last year, and a sweep is certainly doable this year with Bill Belichick gone.
  • Hosting Denver, a team the Jets beat last year, is another favorable home game and a chance for the defense to flex against a probable rookie quarterback (Bo Nix).
  • An overseas game against Minnesota (Sam Darnold seeing ghosts?) should favor the Jets.
  • If the NFL doesn’t try to get Rodgers injured again on opening night, they have him back at MetLife against Buffalo on another Monday night in Week 6, a tough game.
  • The Jets should be favored in Arizona (bad defense, erratic quarterback) in Week 10.
  • Trips to Tennessee (Week 2) and Pittsburgh (Week 7) could be tricky and could be a 1-1 split.
  • The Jets beat Houston last year in a game where C.J. Stroud was concussed, but that should be a better team this year on a short week too (Week 9) on Halloween.
  • Important for the Jets to deliver at home in Weeks 11 and 13 (bye in between) against the Colts and Seahawks.
  • Back-to-back trips to Florida in Weeks 14-15 against the Dolphins and Jaguars should be another case where they need to go at least 1-1 (preferably win the division game).
  • They’ll host the Rams in Week 16, a winnable game.
  • A trip to Buffalo in Week 17 could be huge for the standings and is one of the hardest games on the schedule.
  • Preferable to end at home with Miami instead of going down there in Week 18. Another potentially huge game for the playoffs.

The outlook last year was a brutal opening slate followed by an easy finish. But the Jets actually ended up starting 4-3 (a punt return touchdown against the Bills and a pick party thrown by Jalen Hurts helped) and finishing 3-7.

A different look this year with a really tough game to start the season and a tough final month too. But I am sold on the defense and Rodgers playing well enough to help this team get over 9.5 wins.

The issue for the division is I still trust Josh Allen and the Bills more, and that includes the head-to-head matchups that could be crucial in the tiebreakers this year. For that reason, my AFC East pick is sticking with Buffalo as the team most reliably capable of winning 11-plus games.

Remember, betting on the Jets to disappoint you, in the end, is practically undefeated since 1970. This is going to be a better team this year, but let’s apply some caution with thinking Rodgers is going to be in vintage form and the defense is going to look like the 2009 Jets.

And they better pay Reddick.

NFL Pick: 2024 NFL Comeback Player of the Year – Aaron Rodgers (+200 at FanDuel)

NFL Pick: New York Jets Over 9.5 wins (-162 at FanDuel)

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Photo of Scott Kacsmar Scott Kacsmar31/07/2024 - 10:53 am