JETS DON’T ADD UP
Bowles says surprise start is not addition by subtraction
The Jets trimmed plenty of veteran fat from the roster after last season. Perhaps their surprising start is a product of that, a case of addition by subtraction.
Gone are mainstays like Sheldon Richardson, Nick Mangold, Darrelle Revis, Brandon Marshall, Eric Decker, Calvin Pryor and David Harris. Yet, the Jets have two wins in their first four games, a win total they did not reach until late October a year ago. Head coach Todd Bowles isn’t buying it. “They’re not a product of subtractions. You move on,” he said. “Two wins are just a product of them working hard, coming together. It has nothing to do with the guys that left.”
This was supposed to be a dismal season for the Jets, yet here they are, talking about going for a third win in a row and not getting over-confident. Yes, the Jets are trying not to get heads that are too big, while the Patriots have the same record as them and their crosstown rivals, the Giants, are 0-4 and playing the part everyone in football thought Bowles’s team was going to be playing.
Yes, it’s only two wins against the weak Dolphins and the Jaguars, but it’s impossible not to acknowledge the Jets are already defying expectations. Bowles indicated the Jets are still figuring out their identity. But hard work and team chemistry are certainly drivers of their .500 record and things he hopes to build on as this team fully takes shape.
“We’re still figuring out who we are and what we can do well,” he said. “We’re close. We know we’re going to fight, we’re going to fight through everything together. We’re close to figuring out where we want to be.”
Right now, the Jets are light years ahead of where many outside their locker room believed they’d be after four weeks. With the winless Browns next up, the Jets could make it three in a row and talk of a lost season is suddenly as out-dated as a place called Revis Island. Those low expectations have also played a part in two straight wins.
“We’ve said it all along. I think there’s, for us in the building, there’s an exterior narrative and the story we’re trying to tell and we believe in, and I do believe those are two different things,” Josh McCown said. “You have to be hiding under a rock to not know that.”
Things are so good on Jets Drive right now, McCown called it “one of the better places that I’ve been in 15 years.”
It would be easy to say the good vibrations the Jets are enjoying are attributed to the changes they made in the offseason and the many veterans they extracted from what seemed like a fractured locker room last year. One of the major storylines of training camp was the war of words between Richardson and Marshall, you’ll recall. But now they’re both gone, and the Jets are winning.
“The way we are right now is just united. That’s one thing we’ve been harping on a lot this year is playing for each other,” Leonard Williams said. “We’ve been coming together through adversity and hard times.”
The Jets were supposed to be in store for plenty of hard times this season, which would put them in position for a high draft pick and a new era. But perhaps adversity has already galvanized the franchise, and maybe the new era has already started.