The Bills are going to the playoffs, while the Jets will be headed home once again, before the calendar even flips to 2020.
Sunday’s season finale in Buffalo — to complete a ninth straight year without a postseason berth — still holds some carryover significance for head coach Adam Gase and the Jets. They can complete a 6-2 second half after winning just one of their first eight games.
“You always want to be playing another week,” Gase said before Thursday’s practice in Florham Park. “That’s the toughest part about the situation. You want to play another week. You want to get a chance to get in the tournament and see what happens. Because once you get in there, anything can happen…But we just didn’t start out fast enough.”
The Jets opened this season 0-4, with second-year quarterback Sam Darnold missing the latter three games after the opener with mononucleosis, among various other injuries across the roster. They also have received little production all season from $52.5 million free-agent addition Le’Veon Bell.
“Whatever that reason is, it’s irrelevant,” Gase said. “We’ve played better here the back half of the season, there’s been a lot better complementary football.
“I think guys understand how we want to play. I think last week (against Pittsburgh) was a really good example. Guys did a phenomenal job of playing exactly the way we wanted to play, against that team.”
Despite Buffalo being locked in to the No. 5 playoff seed in the AFC, Bills coach Sean McDermott revealed earlier this week that he plans to play his starters, including quarterback Josh Allen, against the Jets.
“That’s really not a (focus) of ours, who’s playing, it’s all about kind of understanding their scheme and going into this game studying these guys like we didn’t know what they’re going to do,” Gase said. “We had to (approach it) as if all those guys are playing, which it sounds like they are now.
“That was one of the big things that we talked about, and really it’s about getting better. We have one week to go get better — practice, game – and our team has to do all those things against a good football team.”
Pro Bowl safety Jamal Adams and other players said following Sunday’s win over the Steelers that they believe the Jets are “not that far away” from being a playoff contender.
Asked what another win Sunday would do for the Jets heading into the offseason and the 2020 campaign, Gase replied, “It’s hard for me to think that far, that’s a long ways away. But I love the fact that Jamal feels great about the direction we’re going in.”
Even with the first five wins of the team’s second-half surge coming against teams with a combined record of 26-49, adding a closeout win against playoff-bound Buffalo would be “just a huge building block going into the offseason,” according to offensive tackle Brandon Shell.
“I think you have to look at everything. But I love the fact that our guys kept battling, kept practicing hard, kept trying to find ways to improve and flip it around,” Gase said. “I hate it basically for our fans and everybody that had high hopes on this season. We didn’t play very well at the beginning of the year, we had too many negative things happen and we didn’t find a way to win games. We just got going too late.”
