The New York Jets’ season from hell continued on Sunday when they lost to the visiting Seattle Seahawks, 26-21.
The Jets are now 3-9. Their head coach and general manager have already been fired; quarterback Aaron Rodgers seems likely to follow.
But in a season so disastrous, with high expectations and a once-feared roster, everybody has played a part in New York falling short.
That includes corner Sauce Gardner, who entered the year as arguably the top corner in football and has endured the worst season of his professional career. On Sunday, he left the game early with a hamstring injury and spoke about his team’s extended and brutal struggles.
“It’s unacceptable, especially how the game started,” Gardner said, via SNY. “That’s why I needed the bye week. Get myself together, see what I could do better. Just find ways to be a better person, better teammate, be more positive through all the adversity. I feel like when you’re going through a lot of adversity it’s easy to feed into a little bit.”
Adversity is in the air in East Rutherford. Gardner has never struggled like this before and seemingly the entire defense sans Jamien Sherwood and Will McDonald has taken a step back. Rodgers has struggled, the run game hasn’t gotten going, the pass protection hasn’t helped, and special teams has been a disaster.
On Sunday, that culminated in another horrific loss, stealing defeat from the jaws of victory. New York made a key stop at the goal line, had a two-possession lead, and contained Seattle’s best players. The Jets fumbled away the win anyway.
“If there was an analytic it would probably say if you recover a kickoff and score a kick return, you’re probably not supposed to lose,” Gardner said. “Literally everything was going our way. In my three years being here, that was the first time where I’m like, nothing went wrong for us.”
Week 13 was just another chapter in New York’s embarrassing season. As fans turn their attention toward the NFL Draft and recalibrate their expectations for 2025, a bleak truth remains. Sometimes, this cruel sport offers little solace.
“I’m kinda shocked. I’ve never seen nothing like it. Everything goes our way and we still lose. Not sugarcoating nothing, I don’t know. I don’t know how to handle it.”
