The resilience that shone through in a 3–1 October, after Aaron Rodgers went down, was wearing thin. The New York Jets’ injuries were mounting and, at 4–7, any idea of going to the playoffs behind Zach Wilson, Tim Boyle, Trevor Siemian or whomever else they’d roll out there at quarterback was quickly slipping away.
Something needed to change.
So the coaches dug in on their offense, one that averaged just nine points per game through the Jets’ winless November, with the final straw being a 34–13 Black Friday loss to the Miami Dolphins, one in which the team’s only points in the first 55 minutes came on a pick-six, and New York rushed for a grand total of 29 yards.
“We went into last offseason, first year in the new offense, first year with a Hall of Fame quarterback, and we installed an offense designed for 17 games worth of Aaron Rodgers,” Jets coach Robert Saleh said Saturday, the first day of his summer break. “When he got hurt, we still wanted to maintain what we installed. Maybe it wasn’t as much as Aaron would have done. But we wanted to keep the same philosophy of what we’re trying to get done.
“As the year went on, and injuries started to pile up, we realized that there needed to be a shift in philosophy.”
Saleh, coordinator Nathaniel Hackett and the offensive coaches didn’t reinvent the wheel with the mini-bye they got from playing early on Thanksgiving weekend. In fact, they went the other way altogether.
Instead of doing more, as having Rodgers would have allowed, the Jets committed to doing less. The coaches found that through playing the hand they were dealt at quarterback, and the injuries they endured at offensive line, there wasn’t enough they’d found a way to get truly good at as the season wore on. So the idea was to find those things, do them more regularly and see where the chips might fall from there.
The success of that plan was modest. But, eventually, it did come. The Jets won three of their final five games. After failing to hit 100 yards rushing eight times in a nine-game stretch, they hit that mark in each of the last three weeks of the season—going for 164, 107 and 185 in their 15th, 16th, and 17th games, respectively.
Overall, they tried to find what would be the main thing—and keep it the main thing.
And while it wasn’t their intention back then, they laid the foundation for what was to come in the 2024 offseason and, if things work out as planned, beyond.
