They have been disappointing and inconsistent this season.
They will play the final of Sunday’s season already a few kilometers away from the playoff dispute.
They were injured before the start of the season even by key players who dropped out of 2020 due to concerns about COVID-19.
They suffered a number of debilitating injuries during the season.
Their defensive game was extremely incompatible with the future on the position in serious discussion.
They played the season with a severe shortage of explosive players in the qualifying position.
Of course, these are the planes …
… and the Patriots, too.
The 2-13 chips, which go into a two-game winning streak, feel good, playing 6-9 Tom Brady Patriots, who lost the last three games in Sunday’s season finale for both teams at Gillette Stadium.
While the Jets are freshly bothered by the Rams, who were 9-4 at the time, and the Browns, who were 10-4 before last week, the Patriots lost 24-3 to the Rams, 22-12 to the Dolphins and 38- 9 to the AFC East Bills champion in the last three games.
“It simply came to our notice then. … It’s weird not to see them go into the playoffs, “said Henry Anderson, who defeated the Jets 30-27 with a goal in the final seconds earlier this season.
“It’s weird because you’re used to seeing them play games in January and February,” Jets goalie Greg Van Roten said Wednesday. “Yes, it’s different, but these things are happening in the NFL. They are a team like us that had a lot of injuries, they had a lot of guys who gave up. It’s not an excuse, but it makes things more difficult, makes obstacles harder to overcome.
“It was one of those years for a lot of teams.”
Patriots, however, turned it into an art form, avoiding “one of those years” for years.
This will be the first season of 2008 that will no longer be in the playoffs and only the second time since 2002. Their series of 11 consecutive AFC East titles has been stopped this year. Since Bill Belichick took over as coach in 2000, the Patriots have been to nine Super Bowls, winning six of them.
They did all this, of course, with Tom Brady at the helm.
This season without Brady was a revelation, proof of Brady’s incredible ability to lift the players around him. The lack of this transformed the Patriots from the extraordinary to the ordinary.
The Patriots tried to replace Brady with Cam Newton, whose MVP powers in the 2015 season seem to have long since disappeared.
In short, it didn’t work, turning the Patriots into a team that has been around for almost 20 years without having to worry about the position of defender in one of the many in the entire league that doesn’t have a reliable one.
Newton, who has thrown just five touchdown passes in 338 attempts this season for 10 interceptions, has thrown a single TD pass in the last four games. He was replaced and replaced by Jarrett Stidham in the explosive loss on Monday night at Bills, after completing 5 of 10 passes for 34 meters.
Asked this week what the transition was like without Brady, after a long break, Belichick replied: “Well … our recording is disappointing. Obviously, we do things differently than we did in the past. We just have to perform at a higher level. All of us. [We] keep working to do that. “
Belichick has shown a curious relentless support for Newton this season, despite numerous spectacular performances. Instead of playing young Stidham to see him as a possible starter in the future, the stubborn Belichick continues to trot Newton – as he is expected to do on Sunday against the Jets.
“He worked a little hard,” Belichick said. “She did everything I asked her to do. He gave us great leadership, toughness and competitiveness. I have a lot of respect for what he did for us this year. “
But just as Belichick has “a lot of respect” for Newton, the Jets have the same respect for Darnold, who at the age of 23 has shown tremendous resilience to all those who have lost.
However, Belichick’s problem with Newton is the same as for the Jets and Darnold: the game of both defenders was not conducive to winning football.
So that leaves the Jets and Patriots in very similar places with the end of this season: with a lot of questions about the future of the quarterback position.
And that leaves New England in an amazing position to be essentially one and the same with the Jets, who for the last 20 years have been the Patriots’ personal punching bag.
And this must upset Belichick, whose contempt for jets is as transparent as a sliding glass door.