The Jets have lost three straight and are 1-3, and our model still has New York at nine wins because the defense has not allowed more than 31 points all year
Updated
The Jets lost 23-12 in Chicago, their third straight defeat after the opening win in Tennessee, and the pattern of the three losses is the same: the defense keeps it close and the offense cannot finish. New York is 1-3, and when we ran the rest of the season the Jets came out at 9-8 with a 51 percent playoff chance, which is up from 8.0 wins and 29 percent after Week 3. A team that lost its third in a row and gained a win in the projection is unusual. The explanation is that the model has graded the Jets' defense as the third-best in the league and keeps watching it hold up, and the standings around them softened when Buffalo lost at home.
The defense is the whole argument. New York has allowed 84 points in four games, and our model projects the unit giving up 291 points, third in the league, and the third-fewest yards. Minkah Fitzpatrick projects for over five interceptions, the highest single-player pick projection in the league. Kingsley Enagbare projects for nine and a half sacks. Jowon Briggs for seven and a half from the interior. David Bailey's line has jumped from two sacks to six since last week as his snap count has grown. Demario Davis anchors the middle at 105 tackles with two and a half sacks. The team projects for 40 sacks and nearly eleven interceptions, and it has held the Lions, Packers and Bears to a combined 74 points in three losses. That is not a defense that is losing games.
The offense is the reason the Jets are 1-3, and it is a quiet offense rather than a broken one. Geno Smith is 85 of 117 for 902 yards with five touchdowns and no interceptions, a passer rating of 109, and has been sacked twelve times. The model projects him for 3,742 yards and 19 touchdowns behind a 97 rating. Garrett Wilson has 24 catches for 270 yards and two scores and projects for 95 catches and 1,167 yards. Kenyon Sadiq projects for 54 catches at tight end. The running game has been the gap. Breece Hall missed the Chicago game with a quad injury and is week to week, and Braelon Allen started in his place. Hall still projects for 950 rushing yards if he returns soon. The unit projects for 322 points, 25th in the league, and that is the number a 109-rated quarterback and a healthy Hall should be able to beat.
The division has opened up in a way that favors a team that is only 1-3. Buffalo is 3-1 and projects for eight wins after losing at home to New England. The Patriots are 2-2 and project for nine. Miami is 0-4 and projects for two. The Jets have not played any of them yet and project for nine. When we ran the rest of the season the AFC East came out as a three-team race between teams projected within a win of each other, and the Jets won it in a meaningful share of simulated years despite the record. Six division games remain, and the defense is the best of the three.
The next month is the softest stretch of the year and it arrives at the right time. Cleveland at home at 78 percent, a trip to New England at 52, Miami at home at 86, Las Vegas at home at 56, and a trip to Kansas City at 32. When we ran that stretch the Jets went 3-2 more often than anything else and 4-1 often enough to matter. A 5-4 record entering November, with two division games banked, would put nine wins on schedule and the playoff coin flip the model has been quoting would start to look like a lean.
The matchup record is a team that has lost close games it was not supposed to win. We gave the Jets 76 percent in Tennessee and they won. We gave them 42 against Green Bay and they lost by three, 32 in Detroit and they lost by seven, and 26 in Chicago and they lost by eleven. One win from about one and three-quarters expected is a small underperformance, and the three losses were all to teams the model had ahead of New York. None of it has been the kind of result that changes a grade.
The player lines are quieter than the record suggests. Geno Smith's projection dropped from 3,909 yards to 3,742 and his rating projection rose from 95 to 97, the model expecting fewer throws and cleaner ones. Wilson's projection slipped from 101 catches to 95. Isaiah Williams' yardage line rose from 550 to 620. Hall's rushing projection dropped from 996 to 950 with the quad injury priced in and Braelon Allen's climbed from 218 to 297. On defense, David Bailey's sack projection jumped from two to over six, the biggest move on the roster, and Enagbare's from 8.2 to 9.5. Fitzpatrick's interception line rose from 5.1 to 5.3. Demario Davis' sack projection climbed from 1.5 to 2.4 while his tackle projection fell from 116 to 105. The number to watch is the points allowed, which the model has at 291, down from 323 a week ago, the third-best in the league. That is the number carrying a 1-3 team to a nine-win projection, and it has not been wrong yet.
The market opened the Jets at nine wins. Our model sat on it in July, a win under after Week 3, and back on it now. The lean has never been large and it is not large now. The defense is a top-three unit by our numbers and has played like one for a month. The offense has a quarterback with no interceptions and a receiver on pace for 95 catches and still cannot score. Nine wins is where that meets, and the next five games are where the Jets find out if the division is still there to be won.
