Does the season end with a loss?
It does not.
As a Jets fan, you know this. You know that a few of the more satisfying seasons in Jets history started off slowly. You recall 1981, which started 0-3 before the Sack Exchange flexed its muscles and ultimately delivered the first playoff berth after a 12-year drought. You recall 1998, which started 0-2 including — for disciples of symmetry — an opening-week loss in San Francisco, and ended in the AFC Championship game.
You might even recall 2002, which began with a win but then descended into hell, 1-4 and 2-5, before Chad Pennington fell out of the sky and before long was beating Peyton Manning in a playoff game — a home playoff game, the last one the Jets have ever participated in — 41-0.
So yes, the Jets can lose at Tennessee on Sunday — they can fall to 0-2, they can lose to a Titans team that looked positively dreadful last week in Chicago, and to a quarterback, Will Levis, who played so poorly you half expected he was wearing “GSH” on his left sleeve the way Bears players do — and it won’t be the end of the world, or the end of the season.
It’ll just feel that way.
So go ahead and dismiss the notion that this is a must-win, if you like. The Jets would not be eliminated with a loss. There are still, theoretically, enough wins left on the schedule that they could recover from that. The quarterback is still Aaron Rodgers, and that means something. The defense — though humbled to its core by the ransacking it endured in California on national TV — should still be stout.
Still …
At this point 1-1 seems like it would be a full-exhale relief.
Oh-and-two feels like it would not be welcomed well, especially with another game against the Patriots on Thursday night in the home opener, the end of a grinding three-games-in-11-days start to the season. If the Jets are 0-2 heading into New England Week — even if it’s only half a week — things could get a little antsy around here. And a little salty, too.
“It’s a long season,” Rodgers said earlier this week. “I think at times people think the season is like: You’re out in the prairie or the desert and you’re wandering around trying to find water. But it’s more like a nice, slow bolero, where we’re just swaying with the music and reacting to whatever comes to us and through us.”
In other words — in Rodgers’ words — “Just trying to not get too high with the highs or too low with the lows.”
Understood.
Still …
Rodgers looked sharp on his two scoring drive, rusty on others, and most important he kept his name off the injury report. Rodgers, it turns out, is the least of the Jets’ concerns after Week 1.
The defense?
That’s the big concern. That’s the thousand-pound green elephant in the room. And look, statistically it’s been hard to argue with how good that unit has been the past few years. Many weeks, it was a lone beacon of hope in an endless blur of three-and-outs on the other side of the ball. But it’s also had some soft weeks before. It’s usually managed to follow with a big effort.
It needs a big effort against Tennessee. That’s non-negotiable. If Jets fans are muttering “Levis!” the way Giants fans did “Darnold!” last week — which is to say, the way Seinfeld used to greet Newman the postman — there will be some rampant dyspepsia among the faithful on the other side of Sunday.
“That was not to our standard by any means,” defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich said of the Frisco fiasco, “and that’s everyone involved. That’s coaches, that’s every single player, that’s the call, and it starts with me, so we’ve got to be better, and we will be better.”
Sometimes it really is that simple. The Jets need to be better by the time 1 o’clock arrives Sunday, much better. The season won’t be over if they aren’t, but if that happens, then by Thursday they might all wish it was.