Why New York Jets as a Super Bowl Contender is Laughable

The New York Jets now search for answers as some were ready to crown them after week three.

Robert Deutsch-Imagn Images

It has been quite the roller coaster of a season already so far for the New York Jets.

In week one, the sky looked like it was falling in the wake of a beatdown at the hands of the San Francisco 49ers on the road, but most were able to give benefit of the doubt given the fact that it was the first game of the season against one of the best teams in the league in primetime. Week two needed to look better, and while it ended in a victory, things were still sluggish on offense against a Titans team that New York should have been significantly better than.

Then came Thursday night of week three, where the Jets man-handled their arch nemesis New England Patriots and for the first time in a Jets uniform, Aaron Rodgers looked like the quarterback the team believed they were getting when they traded for him last offseason. While New York fans were ready to crown the team as Super Bowl contenders after they handled one of the worst teams in football in New England, less than two weeks later it all feels like a mirage.

If the week three performance lifted Jets fans to nirvana, nothing made them fall back down to earth in a harsh and ungraceful fashion than the week four loss to the Denver Broncos. New York found a way to lose a game in which the opposing quarterback threw for just 60 yards. SIXTY YARDS! In an NFL game! It is legitimately difficult to have that poor of a passing attack in 2024.

Denver's offense was so atrocious in the first half that rookie Bo Nix somehow managed to enter the locker room at the break with negative seven passing yards. The Broncos did not have a singular first down until over five minutes into the second quarter. And yet, the Jets could not take advantage and led just 6-0 at the break.

Nearly the entire offensive output for Denver came from one touchdown drive in the second half where Nix was able to find Courtland Sutton in the back of the end zone. It's not as if the Jets didn't move the ball at all either. They would find their way inside Denver territory then be backed up via either a penalty or a negative play and have to settle for a field goal attempt. Even a soft pass interference penalty that put New York on the 1-yard line couldn't end in a touchdown.

Rodgers looked like a shell on Sunday of what he looked like just 10 days earlier in the same offense against what was supposedly a good defense in the Patriots. He did not look like the Hall of Fame gunslinger that the Jets need in order to compete for the division, let-alone the conference. The simple fact of the matter is that the team who showed up to Metlife Stadium on Sunday isn't just not a Super Bowl contender, they're not even a team that looked like they belong in the playoffs.

Things are moving in the wrong direction and they're moving fast. Up next comes a game against ironically their former No. 3 overall pick in quarterback Sam Darnold and the Minnesota Vikings in London. Darnold has been fantastic to start the year and if the season ended today would very well have a case for the league MVP award.

Losing back-to-back and having it be at the hands of Darnold would be the ultimate slap in the face to a team in New York that clearly has an over-inflated sense of what it is right now.