Firing the coach didn’t galvanize the Jets to a win Monday night against the Bills.
And Troy Aikman believes things may only get uglier for the reeling Jets.
“I could see this totally unraveling, maybe that won’t happen, I know the players won’t agree with that,” Aikman said after the 23-20 “Monday Night Football” home loss to the Bills. “But I could see it happening because I think they put so much into this week to winning a game and getting back on track and the owner (Woody Johnson) says this is the best team’s he had in 25 years, all those things, but they didn’t get it done. They’re right back where they were and now what’s the answer for them? They don’t have it.”
A Jets season that began with grand aspirations suddenly seems like it may be yet another chapter in the “Never Trust The Jets” book with the team suddenly 2-4 and not looking like a true contender.
Monday night represented a chance to grab the division lead and beat a sound opponent in new interim coach Jeff Ulbrich’s debut, but the Jets instead turned in a sloppy effort in a disheartening loss.
The once-vaunted defense had no answers for Josh Allen, failing to get a key third-down stop in the fourth quarter that would have allowed the offense to get the ball back.
Kicker Greg Zuerlein missed two field goals that sure proved costly in a three-point game.
The team committed 11 penalties for 110 yards, including a holding infraction that negated a go-ahead touchdown in the third quarter.
And for the third straight game, future Hall of Famer Aaron Rdogers had the ball in his hands with a chance to win late and came up short. He’s thrown an interception on his last pass in back-to-back weeks.
The highs from the “Thursday Night Football’ blowout of the Patriots in Week 3 are a distant memory, although the offense under new play-caller Todd Downing functioned better.
“I don’t know where they go from here, quite honestly,” Aikman said. “This week, with all the changes and then you do, you have some momentum coming in, you start to do some things better than you had done ’em and we see that from time to time when an interim coach takes over and how a team might respond to that. To lose the game the way they did with the penalties and the missed field goals and not capitalizing in the red zone and all those things, I just think it’s going to be really hard on them. Short week now.”
The Jets’ season is not over but they have a tough task on the road against a solid Steelers squad for “Sunday Night Football” in Week 7 and the division-leading Texans are looming in Week 9.
It’s getting late early for Gang Green.
“They’re going to talk about it, ‘It’s a long season,’ and it is,” Aikman’s ESPN partner Joe Buck said after the game. “But after all these changes, it’s kinda the same frustrating result for the New York Jets, although I thought the offense looked a lot better tonight.”