The Jets have spent the past three seasons playing out the string to end the year. They have not made the playoffs in the past eight seasons. They have not even been in contention in the last three.
New coach Adam Gase is determined to change that in 2019.
“We’re going to play meaningful games in the end of November and December,” Gase said. “That’s what we’re going to do.”
That would be a major improvement for the Jets, who have not had a meaningful game late in the season since their loss to the Bills in the 2015 finale. It has been three years of terrible football since then.
The Jets reported to training camp Wednesday and optimism was in the air, as it usually is this time of year. They will be on the field for their first practice Thursday morning as they begin the journey that is the 2019 season.
After an offseason of change that saw the team hire a new coach, a new general manager and go on a spending spree in free agency, expectations are high. It would be hard for the Jets to get any lower than they have been over the past three years, with consecutive 5-11 seasons followed by last year’s 4-12 campaign that spelled the end for coach Todd Bowles and eventually GM Mike Maccagnan.
Second-year quarterback Sam Darnold had a simple answer when he was asked what his expectations for this season are: “A lot of wins,” he said.
If there are a lot of wins, Darnold will surely be at the center of it. The Jets are counting on Darnold to make a leap in Year 2. They added running back Le’Veon Bell and wide receiver Jamison Crowder in free agency to give him some new weapons and traded for guard Kelechi Osemele to bolster the offensive line in front of him.
Will it be enough?
“I think there’s enough talent on this roster to be a playoff contender but for us it’s a one-week-at-a-time mentality,” Darnold said. “We’ve got to take it like that. If guys are looking too far in the future I feel like we could slip up here in the present. You definitely have expectations of making it to the playoffs and we definitely have the talent to do it but I think the way you get there is focusing one week, really one day, at a time.”
Darnold said you can feel a new energy inside the Jets’ headquarters after this offseason.
“The whole building, you can kind of sense almost a rebirth,” Darnold said. “I feel like the whole building is very energized. There’s a lot of energy within the building — a lot of good vibes. For us, it’s just kind of feeding off of that.”
This is a rebirth for Gase, who spent the past three seasons as the head coach of the Dolphins. Miami fired him after a 7-9 season last year and the Jets hired him a little more than a week later. Gase, sporting a full beard, sounded ready to go Wednesday.
“There’s some good juice in our building right now,” Gase said. “We’re ready. We’re 0-0. It’s going to be all about how we come together. We all know we’re starting at 0-0 and it’s time to go to work and see where the chips fall.”
The hard work starts now for the players and coaches. They will face the Giants in two weeks in their first preseason game and the regular season starts Sept. 8 against the Bills.
“It’s going to be when we get going in camp how we handle adversity,” Gase said. “That’s really going to be the key for us. How are we going to handle it when something goes wrong? Which way are we going to go? Who’s going to step up? That’s what we need to know.”
