The Jets pulled out some classic clichés this week as they attempt to find their way out of their losing streak.
Motivational speech to the team: check.
Great week of practice: check.
What might be the most important thing for the 2-5 team to snap its four-game losing streak is this week’s opponents.
The Patriots are terrible.
They are 1-6 and look bad in every way.
In other words, this is just the type of opponent a struggling team needs.
The Jets enter this game as seven-point road favorites, their biggest line as road favorites in more than 30 years.
Despite looking awful over the past month, the Jets have a chance to get right against the terrible Patriots, a team they dismantled last month in New Jersey.
That was their last victory and feels like it happened a year ago.
Since that win, they have fired coach Robert Saleh, changed play-callers from Nathaniel Hackett to Todd Downing, traded for Davante Adams and convinced Haason Reddick to end his holdout.
The Jets pummeled the Patriots, 24-3, last month, so they know they can dominate a New England team that went through its own drama this week after coach Jerod Mayo called the players “soft.”
“I think this team is capable of doing so much and obviously we got to demonstrate it,” Jets interim coach Jeff Ulbrich said. “We got to show that, and this is the week we got to start. Yeah, we played well that game [against the Patriots], but we’re capable of that every week. I’m excited about this opportunity for the guys.”
There was a lot of happy talk this week about turning it around and how inspired they were by a postgame speech from Adams, who was just six days into his time with the Jets before calling the team out for lacking energy.
The Jets believe Adams’ speech could flip the switch.
“Sometimes it just takes that one thing to happen,” quarterback Aaron Rodgers said. “It could be a speech before a game, after a game, something during the week that just clicks. The energy of that click can be contagious. I think what you do is you try to set up a lot of different things that are part of the structure and the foundation of a winning culture but until each of those things click in you’re fighting against some of the ghosts of years past.”