CBS/NFL
The Jets look competent and fun for the first time in a long time
I’ve got a handful of happy Jets memories. Tearing the Colts to shreds in the playoffs in ’02; the back-to-back runs to the AFC Championship Game with Rex Ryan; 2015 with Ryan Fitzpatrick. As I’ve gotten older, though, those moments have become fewer and further between, and have seemingly evaporated entirely over the last decade.
Even when things go right for the Jets, they still somehow go wrong. Remember quarterback Chad Pennington? His Jets career was marred by injury before he went to the Miami Dolphins, where he won Comeback Player of the Year and led them to the playoffs. That aforementioned 2015 season? The Jets finished 10-6, and Fitzpatrick had one of the best QB seasons the franchise had ever seen, yet they still missed the playoffs on the final day of the regular season.
Then there was when Aaron Rodgers came to town, seemingly as the final piece to help get a young, talented core into the postseason and beyond. Even before he tore his Achilles just minutes into his Jets career, the red flags of his personality were aplenty. What followed were some of the most miserable seasons in the franchise’s modern history. And this is AFTER the Adam Gase and Zach Wilson era.
Even last year — when being bad was vaguely excusable given the shortcomings of a rookie head coach — the Jets were beyond the pale of positivity: not only were they losing, but they made the entire process miserable.
Being a Jets fan (and a Mets fan, for good measure), you come to expect the worst; to not believe your eyes for fear of the oasis vanishing back into illusion. So even writing this feels like tempting the football gods, but this feeling has been so absent from my life for so long that it feels worth celebrating: the Jets are actually fun again.
The Jets are 2-3 on the season — far from a glistening record. But more important than how the record looks is how the team feels, and for the first time in a long time, it feels competent. The team is also stacked with players that are easy to root for, from soft-spoken rookies like David Bailey (he was born in 2003 yet has no social media), to win-at-all-costs Pro Bowlers like Garrett Wilson, to sage veterans like Demario Davis. In the parlance on Henry Hill, you’d like these guys; they’re a bunch of good fellas.
In Week 1, they thoroughly outclassed the overmatched Tennessee Titans. While the Titans may be the worst team in the league this year, the Jets besting another NFL organization in every aspect of the game happens about as frequently as cicada summers.
In Week 2 they should have beaten the Packers, and could have beaten the Lions in Week 3, before finally winning ugly against the Browns on Sunday — the type of win that Jets teams in the past made a habit out of losing. Only in Week 4 against the Bears did Gang Green look thoroughly out of their depth this season, which will hopefully be the exception to the rule that the Jets are actually decent this year.
It’s not just the eye test that the Jets have passed so far this year, either, as their defensive unit has also gotten off to a historically elite start, which is undoubtedly a credit to head coach Aaron Glenn, who made his name as a defensive coordinator with the Detroit Lions: the 2026 Jets are the first team since the 1999 Bucs to hold their opponents to under 200 yards of offense in 3 of their first 5 games.
The franchise has a long way to go. Geno Smith is not the long-term answer at quarterback, and Aaron Glenn still needs to prove he can be a winning head coach in this league. But for now, the Jets are staying in games and are having fun doing it, which is something its fans arguably haven’t seen since the Obama administration.
It’s not much to most, but it’s a lot to us, so I’m going to enjoy it for however long it lasts (which may be as soon as six days from now when they head up to Foxboro to take on the resurgent New England Patriots).
you know the drill…who wanna fly with them Jets?!
come for the speech, stay for the game balls 🤝 https://t.co/6aGfDMULWS
— New York Jets (@nyjets) October 12, 2026