The Jets entered a primetime game on Thursday night desperately needing a win to save their chances of ending a playoff drought that spans more than a decade.
Instead, Gang Green fell on its collective face against a Jaguars team that helped their own playoff chances, while the Jets all but buried theirs.
Now, with New York facing an outside chance of being eliminated from playoff contention before getting a chance to even suit up again, the focus has shifted to finding a way to show any sign of life the rest of this once promising season.
“It's not about playoffs right now, it's not,” head coach Robert Saleh said. “We played four consecutive teams that are in the hunt for the playoffs and we battled, we battled three of them. I'm just really disappointed with this showing today.
“But right now it’s not about playoffs. It’s about getting off this mat and freaking trying to put together a football game.”
The Jets, one of the surprises of the NFL season just a month ago, seemed headed straight for postseason football, but a pair of close losses to the Bills and Vikings coupled with Thursday’s embarrassment have suddenly sucked the air out of MetLife Stadium, where the home crowd rained boos down on Zach Wilson and the inept New York offense throughout the night. The typically stout defense allowed a 96-yard touchdown drive, seemingly a step behind Doug Pederson’s Jaguars for 60 minutes.
So, the playoff hopes are all but vanished, dwindling so quickly that some Jets players haven’t been able to catch up.
“I don't even know what to say,” Sauce Gardner said. “I was extremely confident and I'm still confident in this team. I was extremely confident and I don’t know what happened. It’s like our fourth straight loss, and a couple of them, we shot ourselves in the foot at the end of the game. We can’t do that stuff.”
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