At 3-3, the New York Jets know they are within striking distance of finally ending their decade-long playoff drought this season.
The only thing seemingly standing in their way happens to be themselves.
Gang Green has lost their last seven contests following their bye week – a staggering number when 55% of the teams who come off their byes usually win with the extra rest. With the Jets coming off the Week 6 bye this season with a contest against the New York Giants, the coaching staff is looking at different ways to help the overall roster get through the usual rust that they’ve been accustomed to seeing.
“I think this is the third time we’ve tried something different to see if we could kickstart ourselves coming off the bye week,” Jets head coach Robert Saleh said Monday. “The shame of last year, just offensively, I think we were so depleted, within the first couple of weeks after the bye week, we just couldn’t recover. The important thing is to stay healthy, keep preparing the way we prepare, keep playing the way we play, and hopefully, we end up on the right side of the result.”
Saleh saw up close and personal last season how poor play immediately following the bye week can destroy an entire season. Following a huge victory over the Bills in 2022, the Jets laid a 10-3 egg in Foxboro against the Patriots. New York was never really able to recover from that loss and it spiraled into a six-game losing streak to end the year.
Part of the reason for the late-season slide was due to a rash of injuries that plagued the entire offense as a whole. The 2023 team has already lost their starting quarterback and All-Pro caliber right tackle, but improved depth has helped limit those losses for the time being.
Coming off of last season’s disappointing finish though has only helped the rest of the team stay focused on the task at hand with an upcoming matchup on Sunday.
“Compared to last year coming off this bye, everyone is more mentally and physically good in a state of mind,” linebacker C.J. Mosley stated.
The mental side of preparing to play off a bye is something the Jets have struggled with over the years. In his first two years as the head honcho, Saleh has struggled to get his team both physically and mentally prepped for the second half of the season.
It’s brought a lot of inward reflection from the defensive-minded coach and has helped him devise a plan that will better suit his roster.
“Some things you have no control over, so we’ve been diving into the schedule compared to a year ago, we tried changing things up, we’re changing things up moving forward. Nothing drastic, but enough to try to keep our guys both physically, emotionally, and mentally involved,” Saleh explained.
Not everyone on the team has noticed a major turning point from the practice slate just yet, but the increased focus has had several of the team’s leaders touting the strength of the overall locker room. Players like Captain Quinnen Williams and Breece Hall have appreciated the overall mindset of the players around them.
Now, it’s just a matter of executing on Sunday for the Jets.
New York has already ended a long streak just two weeks ago when they got their first win in franchise history over the Eagles. If they want 2023 to be the season of broken streaks, Sunday’s contest against the Giants will go a long way to not just ending their seven-year run of futility after the bye but also put them on the fast track to getting to the playoffs as well.
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