The Jets won in Tennessee without scoring much, and our model keeps them at nine wins on the back of a top-six defense
Updated
Twenty-three points in Nashville is not a shootout, and the Jets did not need it to be one. New York went to Tennessee in Week 1, held the Titans to ten, and won the kind of game this roster was built to win. When we re-ran the season the Jets came out exactly where they were in July, at 9-8, with the playoff chance nudging down a touch to a shade over 50 percent. Same number, same reasoning, one more data point in its favor.
Breece Hall ran for 102 yards and a touchdown, Geno Smith went 19 of 24 without a turnover, and the defense did the rest, which is the entire plan. The defense is the reason, and it is doing what the grades said it would. Our model projects New York allowing 306 points, sixth in the league, and surrendering the sixth-fewest yards. Will McDonald IV and Kingsley Enagbare each got to Cam Ward in Nashville, McDonald's projection climbed from under nine sacks to better than twelve, Enagbare projects for nearly twelve of his own, and Minkah Fitzpatrick, the marquee summer addition, holds at five interceptions and 114 tackles as the organizer on the back end, though he left the Tennessee game with a groin injury that bears watching. T'Vondre Sweat anchors the middle. This is a front that gets home and a secondary that makes plays, and it just held a rookie quarterback to ten points on the road.
The offense is the reason the number is not higher, and it is the same reason it was in July. Our model projects 331 points, 23rd in the league, and the 26th-most yards. Geno Smith's line reads 3,455 yards and 15 touchdowns with 13 interceptions behind a passer rating near 88, a modest step up from the summer projection in efficiency and a step down in scoring. Garrett Wilson remains the one genuine weapon, 83 catches for 1,020 yards. Breece Hall carries the ground game at 1,237 yards and eleven scores, and that is where the Jets are going to have to win games, on the ground and behind the defense, because the passing game beyond Wilson is thin. Omar Cooper Jr. at 65 catches and Mason Taylor at 46 are useful, not frightening.
In July we held this projection at arm's length, because a 31st-ranked offense dragging a team to nine wins on the strength of its defense is the kind of thing that happens in a simulation more often than on a field. Week 1 was one data point in the model's favor. The Jets scored 23, the defense gave up ten, and the formula worked. The honest read is that the formula will work against the Titans and Browns of the schedule and get tested hard against the Bills, Patriots and every good quarterback New York draws outside the division.
The division helps more than it did in July. New England lost in Seattle and our model trimmed the Patriots to 8-9. Buffalo climbed to 8-9 after winning in Houston. Miami slid to 6-11. The AFC East now projects as three teams within a win of each other, with the Jets at the top of the pile by a hair, and when we ran the rest of the season New York won the division in a real share of simulated years rather than the handful it managed in the summer run. A defense this good in a division this bunched is a real asset.
The market opened the Jets somewhere between five and six wins, and our model was more than three clear of it in July. The gap has not closed, because the model did not move, and the market has not had time to. We said in the summer that this was a number we would hold rather than trumpet, and we will keep the flag up, because a bottom-ten offense is a bottom-ten offense whatever the defense does. What we will also say is that the first sample went the model's way, and a team that can win 23-10 on the road has a floor most bad offenses never see.
The path to nine wins being right is simple. Hall runs, Wilson eats, Smith avoids the killer turnover, and the defense does the rest. The path to the market being right is the offense stalling in the red zone for a month and asking the defense to be perfect, which is a lot to ask across seventeen games. Both are live. The model leans toward the first, and it now has a Week 1 win to point at.
The next month is where the projection gets tested by real offenses. Green Bay comes to New York in Week 2 with a quarterback who just threw for 387 yards, then the Jets go to Detroit and Chicago in consecutive weeks against the second and fifth-highest scoring projections in football, before hosting Cleveland in Week 5. When we ran that stretch, New York was favored against Green Bay and Cleveland, close in Chicago, and an underdog in Detroit, which lands around 2-2 and a 3-2 record entering October. The Detroit and Chicago games are the ones. A defense that allows 306 points on the season will give up its share in those two. The question is whether the offense scores 20 in either of them.
So the read on the Jets is a defense that can play with anyone, an offense that has to stay out of its way, and a division that suddenly looks winnable. Nine wins was the projection in July and it is the projection now. The difference is that after one week it looks a little less like a simulation getting ahead of itself and a little more like a plan.
