Like so many of the last 50 years, the Jets are near the witching hour well before Halloween.
They are 0-3, toiling in their familiar digs in the dungeon of the NFL. Making it worse, they are three games behind two teams in the AFC East. The Patriots we expect to be 3-0. Now the Bills, normally in cellar-dwelling lockstep with the Jets, are also 3-0.
But unlike many seasons, when the Jets are just a sad soup of disparate players led by faulty coaches, there are some bright spots still left this autumn. The Jets had the Bills beat in Week 1, and had they not blown a 16-0 lead, not missed an extra point and a makeable field goal, they would be 1-2. Had C.J. Mosley not limped off the field that week and had Darnold not contracted mononucleosis, we would have witnessed a different team altogether.
Sure, you can say the Jets always find physical and metaphysical doom around every corner and plunge through the same trap doors faster than any other club. But this season, at least as a barometer of their overall health, is still in play.
Usually a bye week this early in the schedule is worthless. Yet it's the perfect prescription for the Jets because it gives Darnold one more week to recover. When they play their next game in Week 5, Gang Green hopes to give the green light to Darnold. And the Jets' young franchise QB says the team will turn it around.
"We're going to go on a little run here," Darnold told reporters Monday. "It's going to be fun, but it's going to take a lot of work. I know a lot of the guys on the team are willing to put in that work."
There's still fight in the Jets, as evidenced by their gritty play at New England despite plunging into a 30-0 hole and losing 30-14. Darnold may lead the chorus, but their best player, Le'Veon Bell, has been even more feisty in his faith in his team. Bell used Twitter to vehemently warn fans not to lose faith in the Jets. His devotion to football was questioned when he refused to play last year, passing on Pittsburgh's franchise tender. But Bell has reminded us why he was the league's best halfback before his contractual beef with the Steelers, while carrying the team flag in Darnold's absence.
Add to Darnold's mono the fact that Mosley hasn't been here to anchor the defense, plus tight end Chris Herndon's suspension, and you have several high-end NFL players unavailable to a team that doesn't have the depth to replace them.
Consider in the next few weeks that Mosley, Herndon, Jordan Jenkins, Brandon Copeland, Quinnen Williams and Demaryius Thomas will trot back on the gridiron. At that point, we can take a jeweler's eye to the roster and the results on the field.
And as painful as it is for Gang Green to even glance at Big Blue, the Jets can steal some inspiration from the fact that Daniel Jones, who had yet to play a single NFL snap, injected life, liberty and victory into a flatlining team in just one game. It took a missed field goal, and an unspeakable coaching error right before it, to get the Giants back in the bold ink. But sometimes it takes serendipity along with some skill to turn an NFL tanker around.
This is not the Pollyanna view of the NFL world. The Jets have dug themselves into a familiar ditch. But there's some atypical light on their typically bad start.
Entering this season, there had been 176 NFL clubs since 1980 that started the season 0-3. Only six of them — or 3.4% — reached the playoffs. The Jets may find too big a bottleneck by Week 5 to reach the other side. But if they can somehow sneak two wins out of their next three games — against the Eagles, Cowboys, and Patriots — the rest of their slate is pillow soft. Among the titans they face are the Dolphins, Bengals, Redskins and Jaguars, with a combined record of 1-11. In fact, the Jets don't even leave their time zone this year, with Cincinnati being their deepest foray into the old frontier.
Too many times we've turned the Jets into that haunting acronym — Just End The Season. The Giants showed us how one player can remold a moribund franchise. The Jets are getting back a gaggle of big-ticket players on the field by their next game. And maybe this version of Gang Green can avoid the gridiron gangrene that has toppled so many of their predecessors.
Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonKeidel.
