MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — “Losing, period, sucks.”
Garrett Wilson paused. He stretched his neck upward, and then to the left, releasing the tension that’s been building up inside of him for three seasons. Then, he unloaded.
“When you’re up in the fourth quarter all of a sudden it starts to feel like we have a losing problem, like a gene or some s—,” Wilson said. “It’s not like we’re going out there and getting our butt beat from start to finish. No, we have a chance to win the game, we’re supposed to win the game, odds are in our favor and we find a way to lose.”
Wilson has long felt like he was on the edge of unburdening. A year ago in the same locker room, he bemoaned how the Jets kept making the same mistakes as he clenched his fist and released it, over and over. That day, the Jets had lost in embarrassing fashion, 30-0, officially eliminating them from playoffs contention. Sunday’s loss was in a different fashion, but in many ways just as much of a humiliation, as they dropped the game 32-26 in overtime, falling to 3-10 on the season. And, for the second straight year, they were eliminated from playoff contention in Hard Rock Stadium — they’ll miss the postseason for the 14th straight year, the longest drought not just in the NFL, but in the four major North American sports leagues.
This is where it always ends up with this team. Wilson said it feels like it’s genetic, like Murphy’s Law is in their blood — anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
This season, the Jets have found new ways to lose. There have been six games in which they had the ball late in the fourth quarter with a chance to win — they’ve lost all six. They’ve lost three consecutive games in which they went into the fourth quarter with a lead (it was 23-15 on Sunday). They’ve lost five games this season in which they held a lead in the fourth quarter, a new team record.
They went ahead 26-23 on an Anders Carlson field goal with 52 seconds left, but didn’t run enough time off the clock at the end of the drive. Losses of 5 yards on first down (on a pitch to Isaiah Davis) and 6 yards on second (a sack of Aaron Rodgers) necessitated a third-down pass to move back into comfortable field-goal range. With Miami out of timeouts, Rodgers and Davante Adams connected on a back-shoulder throw up the left sideline, but Adams couldn’t stay inbounds to keep the clock running.
Carlson was supposed to boot the ensuing kickoff out of the end zone. Instead Dolphins returner Malik Washington fielded it at the 1 and returned it 45 yards. The Dolphins offense moved it another 20 yards and Jason Sanders tied things up with a 52-yard field goal.
The Jets defense offered little resistance in overtime. Miami moved 70 yards in eight plays, capped by a game-winning 10-yard touchdown pass from Tua Tagovailoa to Jonnu Smith. Game over, and it would have felt inconceivable if it didn’t already feel routine for this team. Tagovailoa threw 47 pass attempts — he wasn’t sacked or hit by a Jets defender on any of them.
“It’s one of those years,” said wide receiver Davante Adams.
Said interim head coach Jeff Ulbrich: “Extremely shocked and disappointed and frustrated and every other adjective you can think of.”
One person who did not sound shocked: Wilson. He’s only in his third season with the Jets, but he already understands the self-fulfilling prophecy, the “Same Old Jets.” The organization tries its best to run away from that phrase, the implication that this team will never change — and yet every season they land right back where they started: at the bottom. That’s why no one should be shocked if Wilson, eligible to negotiate a contract extension for the first time this offseason, isn’t eager to stick around the organization long-term, especially as everything continues to crumble around him.
“How shocking is it? If you had told me that in training camp I would’ve been shocked. As far as how the season’s went and stuff like that, I ain’t that shocked,” Wilson said. “If you had told me that in training camp after the way we prepped, the way we practiced, the way we handled business when we had the other teams come in, I would’ve been like: Yeah, you’re lying. Hell no. We put it together, but one of my takeaways from this is we gotta win when the season comes. Winning in the offseason is winning in the offseason. Winning in training camp is winning in training camp. Let’s win when it matters.”
On Sunday, the Jets wasted one of their best offensive performances of the season. They reached the red zone on each of their first five possessions and scored on all of them — though only two ended with touchdowns, a 17-yard run by rookie running back Isaiah Davis in the second quarter and a three-yard touchdown from Rodgers to Adams in the third.
Wilson (seven catches on 10 targets for 114 yards) and Adams (nine receptions on 11 targets for 109 yards and a touchdown) were stellar, a window into what the Jets offense should look like with two of the best wide receivers in the NFL flanking each other. Rodgers had his first 300-yard game (27 of 39 for 339 yards and a touchdown) since December of 2021. (“It was cool, I’m glad he got over that hurdle, I guess,” Wilson said. “Cool.”) And none of it mattered.
Rodgers was supposed to unlock Wilson’s full potential — and pull the Jets out of the NFL’s basement. Instead, they feel buried deeper than ever and on the verge of a full-scale teardown: New coach, new general manager and, most likely, new quarterback. While Rodgers has shown flashes of greatness, including on Sunday, he has not look like the Prince Who Was Promised.
In the third quarter, Wilson got behind star cornerback Jalen Ramsey — he did that a lot on Sunday — down the sideline and Rodgers aired it out for him, a rare downfield pass in a season where the Jets quarterback has focused more on the short and intermediate areas. Rodgers connected with Wilson for a 42-yard gain, but the throw was angled slightly too far toward the sideline, and Wilson had to adjust his body to reel it in before going out of bounds. If the throw was a little better, he would have scored an easy 68-yard touchdown. It’s not the first time that’s happened between Wilson and Rodgers this season — those moments have been alarmingly frequent, Wilson breaking open and Rodgers missing him.
All told, Wilson caught four of his six targets with Ramsey as the nearest defender, per NextGen Stats, with the most receiving yards allowed by Ramsey as the nearest defender since at least 2017 (97).
The Jets are wasting a once-in-a-lifetime talent at wide receiver, the kind of player — at that position — they’ve failed to get their hands on for most of their existence. He was a first-round pick in 2022, 10th overall, and he’s surpassed every reasonable expectation, especially considering all the turmoil he’s dealt with around him: coaching, quarterbacking, and general dysfunction from a team that hasn’t figured out how to win consistently for over a decade.
It’s fair to wonder at this point if Wilson will even want to stick around much longer. In 2022, after the Jets tumbled down the stretch to lose six of seven games and finish 7-10, Wilson expressed his frustrations to then-Jets head coach Robert Saleh (and others in the organization) about offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur and the way he was being used. LaFleur was fired — a decision pushed by owner Woody Johnson — and replaced by Nathaniel Hackett with an eye toward landing Rodgers. But it only got worse with Hackett. Last season, the Jets had one of the worst offenses in the NFL and, according to multiple team sources, Wilson expressed privately that if things didn’t get better, he wouldn’t want to stick around long-term. Internally (and externally), many have wondered when — not if — Wilson will request a trade.
Have things gotten better? Hackett was demoted when Saleh was fired after Week 5, replaced by Todd Downing. And Wilson has gotten the ball more lately than he did at the start of the season. But Rodgers, the best quarterback Wilson has ever played with, keeps missing Wilson on easy throws.
Even worse, the Jets are still losing. At 3-10, it will take only one more loss for this to be the worst record of Wilson’s three seasons. Wilson has accumulated 81 catches for 877 yards and five touchdowns, putting him on track for his third straight 80-catch, 1,000-yard season to start his career; he’d be the fifth receiver in NFL history to accomplish that (the others: Odell Beckham Jr., Michael Thomas, Justin Jefferson and Ja’Marr Chase).
This offseason, Wilson will likely seek a contract extension making him one of the NFL’s highest-paid wide receivers, a deal that should be worth more than $30 million per year. The Jets hold Wilson’s rights for at least the next two seasons — the fourth year of his contract, then the fifth-year option for 2026, which they’ll likely exercise this offseason. But it might not make it that far. Teams were already calling the Jets at the trade deadline in November, wondering if they could capitalize on Wilson’s frustration before his trade market blows up in the offseason.
The Jets’ next GM and head coach should prioritize locking up the 24-year-old star, the kind of player, with the sort of talent and demeanor, to help change a culture that needs a facelift. After what’s transpired over the last three seasons, but specifically over the last three months, it will take some convincing.
“I don’t think it’s the mindset,” Wilson said of the Jets losing gene. “The mindset is the opposite. Whether or not you can make right on your mindset is different. No, (our) mindset is right, process is right but at the end of the day — we gotta stop being losers.”
(Top photo: Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)
