With Marcus Maye out for the season, the Jets have just two players on defense who have been with Gang Green since even 2018: defensive linemen Nathan Shepherd and Foley Fatukasi.
It was Fatukasi who addressed the defensive part of the locker room after the Jets’ 45-17 loss to the Bills Sunday – making them the first team since 1966 to allow 45 or more points three times in a four-game span – but linebacker C.J. Mosley, one of the Jets’ captains, who spoke about it after the game.
“When we broke it down in the locker room, it was emotional. On this defense, Foley’s been here the longest besides Maye, so he’s been in this situation every year,” Mosley said. “He plays with a lot of passion and works hard, and when you don’t see results, it gets frustrating. When you’re a captain, you have to stay in the right mindset so you can lead the guys, but you have to make it known what we need to do to get better and not have these types of games happen every week.
So what exactly did Fatukasi say about the state of the Jets’ defense?
“Foley put it best when we called it up: we have to check our inner selves. We're at a position now where it's human nature for people to start splitting up, start pointing fingers, start doing anything besides the things it takes to win football games or be successful in life,” Mosley said. “That’s just a football thing when things aren’t going right: people start looking for the easy way out.”
Mosley has barely played double-digit games as a Jet, as he played just twice in 2019 around injuries and opted out of 2020 due to COVID concerns – but he is a veteran and he is a captain, and he’s going to take that leadership role seriously.
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“As long as I'm here and I have a 'C' on my chest, I know I can't let that happen. If players start to see that or if we start to see that, we got to make sure we're calling each other out,” Mosley said of possible dissension in the ranks. “We all have a job here, and we all came here for a certain reason. When you start talking about wins and losses, the big picture can kind of get lost, but we’re all here to win a championship – and that’s a hard thing to do.”
As Mosley noted, despite playing five seasons for a Ravens franchise that has been a perennial playoff contender in the John Harbaugh era, he’s only even seen the divisional round once, let alone a conference championship game or a Super Bowl.
In fact, he’s seen more losing than winning – not counting 2020, the teams Mosley has been on have a lifetime record of 51-54, plus 1-2 in the playoffs – but when he and the Jets finally do reach the promised land, the struggle will be that much more worthwhile.
“Winning a championship is a hard thing to do, but that's why we play this game, that's why you go to work and practice every day, and build relationships with your teammates and the organization and the fans,” Mosley said. “Once we start seeing success, we’ll look back at these moments. I wish we could win every week, but that’s not how football works. It’s tough and frustrating when you don’t get the results, but if you don’t wither away from the hard times, when you put in the work and do things the right way, it makes the success that much better, and proves why you did it.”
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But within that, Mosley knows that even the greatest go through bouts of adversity.
“I just think about Kobe Bryant, all the time and work he put in for 20 years and only got five rings out of it,” he said. “You don’t know when it’s going to pay off, but that’s why you work hard – because when it does happen, it feels that much better.”
And to Fatukasi’s point, now, in the midst of major struggle, is a great time to figure out where any weaker links in the chain may be.
“We gotta do some inner self checking, and once we weed out the ones who don’t want to do that, we’ll start being in a better place, seeing that progress and seeing those wins,” Mosley said. “We built the foundation, and you can’t have a strong house without a strong foundation. This is a character building moment, and we’ll see what our foundation is like this season – will it crack or not?”
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He’s hoping, of course, that there won’t be many if any players to weed out in that situation.
"That's one thing that we have to make sure that doesn't happen, we got to make sure we stay as close knit as possible. We remember that we're all in this together. All our last names are on the back of that jersey, and the front of that jersey represents us,” Mosley said. “What we put on tape, that's all of us. It doesn’t matter which side did better, all that matters is how we play for each other.”
Mosley thinks – nay, he knows – that the Jets have the talent to get it done, but it’s never going to be easy.
“When we step on the field, we can play with anybody,” he said. “This isn’t college; there’s not a big talent gap between any teams.
There’s superstars here and there but at the end of the day, we’re all NFL players, and the team that executes and is most disciplined is the team that wins.”
And, they have to do it their way, the Jets’ way, and Robert Saleh’s way.
"We're not trying to become anybody else, we're trying to build our own identity," Mosley said. "When coach Saleh came here, he had the identity that he wanted; he’s installed what he wants this team to look like, and he still believes in that identity of “all gas, no brake.” Is it easy? No. Do we know when we’re going to start seeing success? No, but that’s why we come to work every day.”
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