There are real positive signs about the direction of the New York Jets franchise.
The 2026 New York Jets are a bad football team.
I would argue that both of those statements are true, and this team’s 26-19 loss to the Patriots in Week 6 proves it.
This season hasn’t just been about wins and losses for the Jets. That statement is often uttered almost like a cliche, but it holds some truth. Wins and losses don’t matter for this team, but there are major implications for the future of this team that go beyond where the Jets finish in the standings this season.
Most important is the success of the rookie class from the 2026 NFL Draft. The success or failure of a rebuild depends largely on the success of Draft classes.
It’s too early to make definitive statements, but we’ve seen positive signs from all three picks this team made in the first round this year. They look like belongings. We can’t declare anyone a star yet, and the class has shown some level of inconsistency. However, no one looks overmatched on an NFL field.
On top of that, we saw a monster Kenyon Sadiq game and a monster David Bailey game. Today we have the monster game Omar Cooper. The rookie, playing in the first full game of his career, had 6 catches for 103 yards and a touchdown and had a second touchdown taken off the board on a suspect penalty call in the first quarter.
Bad teams come in all shapes and sizes in this league. The 2024 Jets are a team full of overpaid big name players who are past their prime, have huge egos, and haven’t played together. The 2025 Jets were a team that was completely overmatched from a talent standpoint most weeks.
The 2026 Jets aren’t like any of those squads. There aren’t many big names on this roster, and they just don’t seem to be able to compete.
However, while the talent level has improved, this is still a team with a below-average base. In a league with a salary cap of $301.2 million, the 2026 Jets have an impressive $116.6 million in dead money. Yes, the Jets are charging more than 38 percent of the Jets’ salary cap dollars to players who are no longer on the team.
They don’t tell you about that in the fine print when you decide to go “all in” around a 40 year old quarterback.
Despite their improvements, the Jets remain a less-than-talented team most weeks when they take the field. They should because of their cap situation. There is no way to build a top football team in 2026.
Teams like the Jets can still win games, but they have a lower margin for error. They need to play smart and opportunistic football. They cannot overcome mistakes.
Much of that goes back to teaching. It is difficult to tell where the responsibility ends for the players and where it begins for the coaching when we discuss the success or failure of a team.
When it comes to evaluating coaching, I ask myself a simple question. Are the coaches who make this team more likely or less likely to have success?
One test I have is if you see a team that understands how to play situational football. When you’re in a two-minute drill or at the end of a quarter, things move too fast to have coaching from the sideline. Either the coaching staff drills the players what to do and what not to do or not to do.
The Jets were outscored 10-0 in the final two minutes of the first half in this loss, leading Zack Rosenblatt of The Athletic to pick up a truly incredible statistic.
Note that these scenarios only last two minutes of each game. That stat was accumulated in 46 minutes of game time, just over three quarters of football. I don’t even know how it’s possible to be outscored 100-6 in 46 minutes of NFL action under any circumstances.
But we saw firsthand the lack of situational football training from the Jets at the end of the half in four of the six games. The clock expired three times on the offense driving the ball. In yesterday’s game, a quick three and out that lasted just 23 seconds gave the Patriots the ball a chance to get one more score before halftime.
In those situations, the smartest teams in the league strike a fine balance between trying to score and running out the clock to prevent the other team from having enough time to score in the event of a punt. In yesterday’s game, the Jets didn’t run the ball once. The Patriots were only forced to use one timeout on the drive. They ended up scoring a touchdown with 14 seconds left on the clock and no timeouts. I understand that you have to throw more than you run in a two-minute drill, but it’s common practice to run the ball once to wind down the clock as a hedge against the other team having too much time if the event is a quick three and out.
What’s even more confusing here is that the Jets spent most of the first half showing an unwillingness to do anything but run the ball. Three of the first four Jets drives on offense stalled as Frank Reich called four consecutive runs, and the fourth run gained either 1 or 0 yards. It’s always easy to make a play when it doesn’t work, but an important part of play calling means staying on top of the defense. When an offense keeps getting stops because it doesn’t stop running and eventually stops, it’s pretty clear that there’s a level of stubbornness at play that hurts the offense.
I could go on and on about teaching. There’s a lot to talk about. We can talk about players who don’t realize a clear hard count situation because the clock expires at the end of the quarter or some shaky calls on the other side of the ball.
The bottom line is that the Jets are showing many signs of a poorly coached football team. While their talent level is better than in the past, they are not good enough for poor execution and poor situational coaching.
Few Jets fans will walk away from that game very happy. It was an ugly loss.
When it comes to the overall trajectory of the 2026 season, however, it’s perfectly fine to feel a tad conflicted. The Jets are showing some real positives, it’s this rookie class. For the first time in four years, it looks like this team is on the verge of hitting a Draft class in a big way.
However, much work remains. This team loses more than it wins. And teaching it is part of that story.