There wasn’t going to be anything resembling a miracle this time. Turns out, relying on pixie dust and the kindness of strangers is an officially unsustainable way to win games in the NFL. Turns out sometimes the other guys — even if the other guys have a history of losing un-lose-able games — aren’t inclined to help.
And simply expose you for what you are.
Not ready for prime time.
And not ready to be discussed with remote seriousness for the AFC playoff picture. Not right now. Maybe not ever.
Look, the Jets’ season didn’t end Monday night, when the Chargers jumped on them early and then simply let them slip and slither in the mud whenever they had the ball. The final score was 27-6, but it sure felt worse than that. No, the season didn’t end.
But the delusion sure should.
“It was a lot of self-inflicted wounds,” Jets coach Robert Saleh said. “Every time we got momentum going, we shot ourselves in the foot.”
Said Zach Wilson: “Too many mistakes. Too many times we shot ourselves in the foot.”
So the Jets are now the Spider from “Goodfellas” of the NFL, leading the league in bullets in the foot, and that’s a terrible blueprint for success. The Jets came into the game on a three-game winning streak that seemed graced by the hand of a supernatural force.
They won two games — against the Eagles and the Giants — that had to be seen to be believed … and even if you saw them, it was hard to believe the final scores. Add the escape against the Bills on opening night, that makes three of their four wins that required divine intervention.
There was nothing divine about this.
The Chargers immediately unplugged what had been an electric and loud crowd at MetLife Stadium when Derius Davis took a first-quarter punt 87 yards all the way to the end zone. The Jets responded by fumbling the ball twice, one that ended a promising drive and one that set the Chargers up on a short field.
That made it 14-0.
And for this team, with this quarterback, with this offensive line, that might as well be 44-0. The Jets had played with a ridiculously low margin for error all season long, and managed to live to tell about it more than they deserved. That wasn’t going to happen here. If they’re going to keep handing Wilson the ball and keep hoping for magical things to happen, there are going to be more endless games just like this one.
And on nights like this when he gets zero help around him — a preposterously outplayed offensive line, a costly fumble by his best weapon (Garrett Wilson) an epic fail of a night from Allen Lazard, who wasn’t quite sure whether he wanted to collect more drops or more costly penalties, another in a long line of uninspired offensive game plans …
Well. As a wise man once asked, incredulously: “PLAYOFFS?”
“Of course there’s going to be frustration,” Saleh said. “People want to win. The main thing is to do your job, stay in your lane, focus on the things you can do to get better. It’s very natural for guys to get frustrated.”
Or just disgusted.
“We played undisciplined ball,” linebacker C.J. Mosley said. “When you play the way we played tonight, this is what happens.”
You know what else happens? You suddenly can’t find your name in a serious playoff conversation, especially since this will likely be a damaging loss with the Chargers now owning the tiebreaker. Most Jets fans realized how remarkable that Eagles/Giants parlay had been — and the players certainly had to know it.
And yet, they entered this game with genuine stakes on the table. Forget the wild card — which figures to be a messy maze to negotiate; somehow, the Jets entered Monday even in the loss column with the Dolphins in the AFC East, one game up on the Bills. As absurd as it may be, the Jets could’ve nudged their way a half-game in arrears for the division lead.
And before the 80,000 fans were even allowed to dream a little dream, Davis took it all the way to the house. It didn’t even matter that the Jets defense did a number again on an elite quarterback, keeping Justin Herbert in check, sacking him five times, harassing him a bunch of other times, keeping the Chargers’ offense, amazingly, to only 191 yards. It should be hard to lose a game when you allow that few, and damn near impossible to get blown out of one.
And yet.
The Jets’ season didn’t end Monday night, no. But it sure seems like they’re in just as bad a shape as Spider was by the end of the movie.
