Last week, I wrote here about the positive story that I thought was plausible for the New York Jets in 2026. The idea was that this young, overhauled roster could overachieve expectations, get some positive regression to the mean with their turnover luck, and have strong offensive line play raise the floor of the entire offense. I still think that story is very much in play.
However, like most things with the Jets, there is always another side to the equation. There is also a pretty easy path to this team going poorly and somehow failing to meet expectations once again. So, like I did last week with the positive spin, I want to lay out the negative story. What does it look like if things go wrong for this team?
To me, it starts with three members of the organization: the quarterback, the offensive playcaller, and the defensive playcaller. There is very little optimism surrounding Geno Smith, Frank Reich, and head coach Aaron Glenn, and for good reason. The last time we saw all three in the NFL, they did not just underperform at their respective jobs. They performed horribly.
Let’s start with the quarterback and offensive coordinator duo.
Going into the season, I would not blame any media pundit or ranking that had Geno Smith and Frank Reich near the bottom of the league. While I do think there is a positive story you can tell about Geno, it is just as easy to construct a negative one.
Geno Smith was simply awful last season.
I don’t need to harp on it too much as everyone knows the details, but a 34.1 QBR and 84.7 passer rating are horrible numbers in today’s NFL. He ranked 29th in EPA per play and 27th in Success Rate. Even though his accuracy remained relatively decent from a CPOE perspective, he still threw 17 interceptions in 15 games. The number I have not heard much about that stood out as well, was that his ADOT tanked as well. He ranked 29th in that metric.
Now, the surrounding cast in Las Vegas was atrocious. The playcaller was also atrocious. There were plenty of things working against Geno, and the hope is that situation should be significantly better here. But even still, I am not quite sure it is as simple as assuming he will bounce back.
The first glimpse we got of Geno this preseason left me cautiously optimistic. His athleticism looked solid and the arm still appeared to be there. But he is also going to turn 36 this year. If Geno were 30 years old, I would be much more willing to chalk up last year’s production to the environment around him and some things that were outside of his control. At 35, though, it is a legitimate question to ask whether Geno simply cannot be a starting quarterback anymore.
And then there is Frank Reich.
Reich is, by NFL standards, ancient. He is 64 years old and has not called plays at the NFL level in more than three years. And simply put, his last two stops were horrific.
In 2022 and 2023, as head coach of the Indianapolis Colts and Carolina Panthers, respectively, Reich was fired midway through both seasons. The talent situation was not great in either place, particularly in Carolina where he was working with an unplayable Bryce Young at the time. But the offenses were still horrific.
To Reich’s credit, there was a point in time when he was regarded as one of the better offensive minds in football. His work from 2014 through 2021 with the Chargers, Eagles, and early in his tenure with the Colts was legitimately impressive. The last time we saw him as an NFL offensive coordinator, he helped coordinate a Super Bowl-winning Eagles offense with Carson Wentz and Nick Foles. But that was years ago. It is hard to overlook the possibility that the game has simply moved past him.
The one thing that gives me some optimism is that, by all accounts, Reich is a heavy proponent of analytics. That makes me more hopeful that he will be willing to change and adapt than your typical veteran coach who has become stuck in his ways. Still, there is a very real negative scenario here.
As fans, we are excited about the young offensive line. We are excited about the young pass catchers. But while we like the idea of some of these players, we still have no idea exactly how good this supporting cast is going to be. It would not stun me at all to look up in late October and realize the Jets offense is once again near the bottom of the league.
Put it all together and you have a pretty simple formula for disaster: a bottom-tier quarterback paired with a bottom-tier playcaller, with a young supporting cast that isn’t quite ready to carry the offense.
That is absolutely on the table.
Now let’s get to the defense.
As I wrote in the positive spin article, I actually like some of the moves the Jets made. This is a completely different unit, and while I am optimistic about the Jets getting some positive regression to the mean from a turnover perspective, it is still hard to overlook just how poor this defense was last year under Aaron Glenn.
I’ve defended Glenn before, and I still think there is some truth to the argument that there is only so much a coach can do when the talent is that poor, which it was for stretches last season. But the thing that keeps me up at night is that pretty much from the beginning, the Glenn/Wilks defense was a disaster.
It is one thing for a defense to become horrific by the end of the season when you are playing JAGs and half your roster is injured. It is another thing entirely when the defense is struggling mightily even with legitimate talent on the field, including players like Sauce Gardner and Quinnen Williams.
I do think the Jets improved the talent on this unit. But there are still two major questions aside from the coaching. Do some of these older players have anything left in the tank? And how is this secondary going to hold up?
Demario Davis, David Onyemata, and Minkah Fitzpatrick were three established veterans brought in to raise the floor of this defense and provide some stability. I personally thought all three moves were relatively fine, particularly because the Jets did not make huge long-term investments in any of them. Having floor stabilizers after what we watched last year was more than needed. But it is certainly not a lock that all three players simply continue playing at their previous level.
Then there is the secondary, where there are more questions than answers right now. AZ Thomas is currently one of the starting boundary corners and, frankly, we have no idea how he is going to look this season. There’s hardly any data or film on him at the NFL level due to his injuries and inexperience last year. Brandon Stephens is currently the No. 1, but in an ideal world, given how volatile he can be, he is probably better suited as an average No. 2 corner. At nickel, Jarvis Brownlee and D’Angelo Ponds appear likely to split time. Brownlee has had flashes, but has also been a bit of a mess throughout his career. I loved Ponds as a prospect, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to be a great NFL player. He would be far from the first rookie corner to struggle mightily in his first season. There’s a real scenario here where this secondary is one of the worst in the league again from a coverage perspective.
You’ll need David Bailey to be a game-changer from the get-go at Edge. While I think he very well can be, again, it’s far from a guarantee.
Like I said, this is the depressing article. If everything I laid out above, or heck even 75% of it, were to happen this year the Jets will once again be near the bottom of the league. A poor offense led by an overmatched quarterback and play-caller and a defense that cannot hold up in the back end with a lame duck head coach is not a winning recipe.
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