Niners a tough task for Week 2 Jets turnaround

The good news for the Jets is, improving off last week should not be too difficult.

After laying an egg in Buffalo, the Jets play their home opener against the 49ers at MetLife Stadium on Sunday, looking to show they are not going to be the pushover they appeared to be in Week 1.

The pressure is already on coach Adam Gase, whose team looked ill-prepared in the loss to the Bills. Team CEO and chairman Christopher Johnson gave Gase what may have been the earliest vote of confidence in NFL history this week. Johnson called Gase a “brilliant offensive mind.”

It’s time for Gase to show the rest of us that brilliance.

“We don’t have a choice, we have to get better, we have to improve,” Gase said. “We have to make sure that we do a better job next week because we are playing another team that’s really good on offense, and they are really good on defense and really good on special teams, so we cannot play like we did this last game.”

The schedule makers did the Jets no favors with two playoff teams to open the season. San Francisco was the NFC champion last year, and the Jets can’t even hope to catch them napping after they lost their season opener to the Cardinals last week.

Though a Jets win would be a major surprise, most fans just want to see this team compete. Last week, the Jets went three-and-out on their first three possessions, and the defense allowed three touchdowns in Buffalo’s first four possessions. It was 21-0 before you could open your first beer.

Early season struggles were expected from the Jets, who had seven new starters on offense and five new starters on defense last week, and no preseason to work out the kinks. Still, it gets late early in the NFL, and the Jets need a good showing Sunday.

“We’ve got a great group of guys who come to work every day and with the right mindset,” quarterback Sam Darnold said. “The last couple of practices have been really good, the attention to detail has been up there. So, we’re just going to continue to work hard and again, we’ve put the amount of time in this week that you need to to beat a team. So, for us it’s just holding each other accountable and doing everything that we possibly can throughout the week to prepare ourselves for Sunday.”