After a long plane flight home from England after Sunday's loss to the Minnesota Vikings, Jets head coach Robert Saleh was back at work and looking ahead to the Week 6 Monday night game on Oct. 14 against AFC East rival Buffalo.
"I said it last week that the NFL is built for chaos and either the sky's falling or you've got Super Bowl aspirations," Saleh told reporters from One Jets Drive early Monday morning. "There's no inbetween anymore. The reality is what the standings look like now are going to be completely different at the end of the season.
"There's so much football to be played. There's so much, so many things that we can get better at and there's so many things that we can continue to build on. I'm not panicked. Nobody in the building is panicked. There's always a sense of urgency. That's the most important thing, where there's always going to be a sense of urgency to go out there and find wins and find efficiency on offense and continue to play great defense and special teams. Monday night's a great opportunity to play football and do our best and try to get the result that we're seeking."
With a 2-3 record, after two straight wins and then consecutive losses, the Jets are one game from landing in a tie with the Bills (3-2) for first place in the division. Bear in mind, however, that between now and mid-November before the bye week (six games), only one game will end before sundown in New York (at the Patriots on Oct. 27). Over that span, the Green & White will play in four night games (Oct. 14 vs. Buffalo, Oct. 20 at Pittsburgh, Oct. 31 vs. Houston and Nov. 17 at Indianapolis) and have one late-afternoon start (NY time) at Arizona on Nov. 10.
For the second week in a row, the Jets ground game was limited and QB Aaron Rodgers, though he became the ninth player in NFL history with 60,000-plus regular-season passing yards (60,148), was hit 11 times and sacked 3 times by the Vikings defense. He threw 3 interceptions for the first time since Week 9 at Detroit in 2022. Saleh reported that Rodgers sustained a low-ankle sprain. With an extra day to treat the injury before facing the Bills, Saleh said that "I'm sure that helps, too, especially for Aaron."
Rodgers was blitzed on 42.1% of his dropbacks on Sunday and in the past two weeks he's been blitzed on 45.4% of his dropbacks (17.9% in Weeks 1-3) as the run game and offensive line have been challenged and under pressure throughout.
"You know what? I don't want to take away credit from the last few opponents that we played two [Denver and Minnesota] of the better defenses in football," Saleh said. "They're two of the more dynamic blitzing teams in football. The reality is, if you throw the ball over 50 times [Rodgers launched 54 passes] like we did [Sunday], the quarterback is going to get hit. Period.
"We didn't run the ball well enough yesterday [Breece Hall and Braelon Allen combined for 14 carries and 36 yards] and we dropped back to pass way too often. When you're sitting in longer situations and teams can tee off on you, it just stockpiles in on yourself. I don't want to sit and say the O-line is just not playing well enough, we're not being efficient enough to put ourselves in position to play football. We're having to play catch up [they trailed by 17-0 on Sunday] and against two really good defenses that pressure the quarterback at a high level and we basically fell into the teeth of their defense."
For all their struggles on offense in London on Sunday, however, the Jets still had an opportunity -- as they did last week against the Broncos -- to come away with a late victory. Against Denver that evaporated on a missed field and on Sunday when Rodgers' pass intended for WR Mike Williams was intercepted at the Vikes' 9-yard line with 49 seconds to play.
"Every game comes down to the last minute of football and you're either making the kick to win the game or you're completing a drive to win the game, or you're not and you're giving it up -- one of the two," Saleh said. "We've been in position to go win. Haven't gotten it done. We were in position to go win against Tennessee. We closed the door. So it's just one of those deals where the NFL is a little bit give and take. It'll balance out, and there's no doubt in my mind that we'll end up finishing off these games to the level that I expect us to and we'll get this thing turned around."
