Jets' 2022 season: What could have been!
Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll, left, greets New York Jets head coach Robert Saleh after an NFL football game, Sunday, Jan. 1, 2023, in Seattle. The Seahawks defeated the Jets 23-6. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren) Credit: AP/Ted S. Warren
Plenty of Jets seasons have ended the way this one has, without an appearance in the playoffs. It’s up to 12 in a row now, so the numbness and distaste of such an anticlimax should be rather routine at this point.
This one, though, feels a little different.
Mainly that’s because this season, as recently as a month or so ago, felt a lot different.
This was going to be the Jets team that defied the franchise’s genetic disposition toward disappointment. The one with fresh faces up and down the roster, up and down the sideline, none of them burdened by a Jets history that weighs on the expectations from those of us who have been witnesses to heartbreak for the past decade or two . . . or, in some cases, five.
At one point they were 7-4, not only near mathematical shoo-ins for a postseason berth but — after beating the Bills and making a much-needed change at quarterback to throttle the Bears — a team that started to exude some true championship contender vibes. They were where they always hoped they would be, playing meaningful games in December and January.
They just had no idea how meaningful they would be.
The precipitous fall is what stings the most. The what-ifs of the past few weeks that ruined what had the potential to be a special experience, the dreadful outings the past two weeks showcasing a team that was inexplicably flat and looked ill-prepared for the loftiness of the challenge.
There have been so many Jets seasons that just faded away, mostly because the playoffs were never a serious objective or rational expectation. That’s not the case this time.
“It’s frustrating because we got a taste of it,” Robert Saleh said on Monday, a day after a fifth straight loss (23-6 at Seattle) finalized the Jets’ elimination and just a few hours after their somber and reflective flight to get home from across the country landed in New Jersey. “It’s a tough pill to swallow. I think we were all pretty excited at 7-4, really looking forward to what could be. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.”
For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: “It might have been!”
There are obviously a number of reasons why that’s the epitaph to this Jets campaign. They need a quarterback who can be a positive difference-maker on the field and off. They need better play on the offensive line and more consistency from an otherwise stout defense. They need to stay healthy; the loss of Breece Hall to a torn ACL has been a very underplayed storyline this season.
They also just need to learn how to win.
Saleh spoke about the progress that has been made not just this season but in his whole brief tenure here.
“I’m going to look at all the good things we’ve done and the foundation we’ve laid and how far we’ve come from the day Joe [Douglas, the general manager] and I locked arms and walked in here two years and where we are now and the direction we are going,” he said. “There are a lot of things to be excited about.”
But he also spoke about the almosts as if they were positives, rattling off the last five weeks of losses as if they were ports of call on a relaxing cruise rather than the downfall of the hopes and dreams this season once carried. Minnesota and Buffalo, two playoff-bound teams contending for top seeds, were games that came “down to the wire,” he said. Detroit was similar, he noted.
In any other Jets year, that might have been an acceptable narrative — talking about the growth from failures, the lessons from losing. This year, though, it shouldn’t be enough that those games were winnable. The Jets needed them (or at least one or two of them) to be actual wins.
Which led us to Jacksonville and Seattle, the 1-2 punch that resulted in this KO.
“I think the sour taste over these last two weeks is it just wasn’t our best,” Saleh said. “That’s where, for me, I’m just really disappointed in the way we’ve gone about our business in terms of giving ourselves a chance . . . It’s tough. All of it is tough.”
They say in the NFL that each season ends with dissatisfaction for 31 of the 32 teams. No one but the Super Bowl winner is ever truly happy with the end result.
There is, however, a spectrum to that bitterness. Teams that at least get to the playoffs and give themselves a genuine shot at the title have one level of it; teams that knew they would be in trouble in training camp and ultimately are proved right certainly have another.
The worst of those degrees of disgust must be when a team is able to generate a genuine sense of excitement and expectation but then fails to deliver on any of it.
That’s where these Jets end their 2022 season.
They were good, yes, but ultimately only good enough to be memorably disappointing.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
