The 10th anniversary of the Butt Fumble arrives next Tuesday, but the New York Jets probably won’t mark the day because that sad-sack play symbolically planted them on their tushies. The Jets have won 57 of 160 games since, with seven 10-loss seasons and zero playoff appearances.
But look again. Six of those victories have come this year, in just nine games, and the Jets find themselves one-half game out of first place in the AFC East – and tied with the Buffalo Bills, whom the Jets beat in their last game and many consider to be of Super Bowl caliber.
The Jets are not doing this with Joe Willie Namath at quarterback. When they took BYU quarterback Zach Wilson with the second overall pick in the 2021 draft, fans and pundits (and not just in New York) wondered why they passed on Trey Lance, Justin Fields and Mac Jones.
Of 32 NFL quarterbacks with 1,000 yards passing, Wilson is 31st in passer rating. Fields, meanwhile, has 325 yards rushing in his last two games and is starting to look like a potent offensive weapon. But the Jets don’t need Wilson to turn nothing into something. For now, they just need to see him be the quarterback who stayed largely mistake-free in their shock win over the Bills earlier this month, rather than the one who was intercepted three times in a woeful performance against the New England Patriots at the end of October.
“Zach’s going to do what it takes to win,” Jets center Connor McGovern said Monday.
Because the Miami Dolphins (7-3) have a bye this week, the Jets can climb into a first-place tie by beating the Patriots on the road. You may recall that the Patriots were the Jets’ opponents on 22 November 2012 – a wet Thanksgiving that spawned the Butt Fumble. The Butt Fumble occurred when Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez scrambled only to slip, his head thumping into the ample posterior of 305lbs offensive guard Brandon Moore. Sanchez fumbled, the Patriots scooped up the loose ball and ran it in for a humiliating, game-killing TD.
A Jets victory on the road Sunday over Bill Belichick and the Patriots would be so delicious for more important reasons than just taking another step away from the Butt Fumble Epoch towards NFL respectability. Revenge factor: the Pats beat the Jets in that October game after which Wilson was excoriated by the notoriously unforgiving New York media (one of the main criticisms of Wilson is that he tries Patrick Mahomes-style throws but has nowhere near the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback’s abilities).
But hardly anything was expected from the Jets this year, either. They were rated 25th by NFL.com and 30th by ESPN among 32 NFL teams in their 2022 preseason rankings. Their MetLife Stadium roomies, the 7-2 New York Football Giants, were 30th and 28th in those rankings, respectively. The Jets and Giants each lost 13 of 17 games last season.
“I got crazy looks when I said at the beginning of the year that we play for the playoffs, period,” wide receiver Braxton Berrios said Monday.
Much of the credit for the Jets’ turnaround has gone, quite deservedly, to a fortified defense that was the leakiest in the NFL last season, but is now ranked seventh. Defensive tackle Quinnen Williams, the third overall pick in the 2019 draft, and linebacker CJ Mosley are outstanding, and the excellent rookie Sauce Gardner and journeyman DJ Reed may be the best cornerback combo in the league.
Plus, one of the consequences of being bad for so long has been a series of high draft picks, supplemented by picks brought in when All-Star safety Jamal Adams was traded to the Seattle Seahawks in 2020. Some picks have not worked out – most notably the team’s former quarterback Sam Darnold, who the Jets selected ahead of Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson in 2018. But more recent additions such as Williams, Gardner and receiver Garrett Wilson look like they could be strong performers for years.
The Jets went through two coaches, Todd Bowles and Adam Gase, after Rex Ryan was sacked in 2014. Robert Saleh, Gase’s replacement, got off to a very slow start, leading the Jets to just one victory in their first six games in 2021. But he has stuck with his plan, which works.
When asked Monday about winning the AFC East, Saleh said, “I’m not sure if it’s necessarily going through people as much as it is handling our business, doing our job, and playing to the best of our ability and trusting that if we do that, we will like the result.”
Williams sounds as if he has bought in, saying last week, “You’ve got to have an amazing leader to have an amazing team.”
The Jets bolstered their offensive line and, as a result, their ground game is stouter. Although the rookie running back Breece Hall was lost for the season to a knee injury on 24 October against Denver, the Jets hammered out 174 rushing yards against Buffalo two weeks later.
Wilson threw only one pass on the drive that resulted in the game-winning field goal against the Bills, completing it for 12 yards to Denzel Mims on third down. Wilson ran for six yards, then was sacked for eight yards. But the Jets were close enough for a go-ahead field goal, and the Jets’ D killed the Bills’ final drive by forcing a sack and two incompletions.
Saleh said Monday of Wilson: “Internally, I think everybody’s got a lot of faith in Zach to be able to run this offense and get the ball where it needs to get to and do it in an efficient manner. I do think that if we do need to put it on his back and put it on our receivers’ backs and put it on the o-line to protect, I think we’re capable of doing that.
“But when you start slinging it around and you ask the quarterback to play 60 plays a game, they’re going to make mistakes, it’s hard to play quarterback, I don’t care how good you are, it’s just hard to play quarterback in this league. It’s our job as coaches to make sure that he’s not being asked to do that constantly. If he has to, we have faith that he’d be able to.”
Berrios said Monday he has “extreme confidence” in Wilson; McGovern later said he had “ultimate confidence” in Wilson. Teammates are required by the NFL Book of Etiquette to say nice things about their quarterbacks, especially those who have thrown a mere four TD passes.
But Wilson has been winning this season. He missed the Jets’ first three regular-season games with a bone bruise and meniscus tear suffered in a preseason game against Philadelphia. The Jets lost two of those three games … and have lost only one of their last six games since Wilson came back, although most observers would credit those wins to the defense rather than anything magical from the quarterback.
The Jets can close out games, too. They have outscored their opponents in the fourth quarter by an aggregate score of 81-23. McGovern said, “It’s a nice boost to know we have the stamina, the durability and the want-to to finish any football game.”
What the Jets have not been able to do since December 2015 is beat the Patriots. The losing streak has reached 13 games. Including the dreadful 49-19 loss to New England on Butt-Fumble Night, the Jets have lost 18 of 20 to New England.
So Sunday’s game at Gillette Stadium should start the process of determining if the Jets are a playoff contender. The Jets are all the way up to 10th in both the NFL.com and ESPN rankings. As Sanchez would say, the Jets could be leaving all that bad football, um, behind.
