It’s no longer “Super Bowl or Bust”
The last two years it has been difficult to define success or failure for the New York Jets. The team entered the 2023 and 2024 seasons in “Super Bowl or bust” mode. The Jets gave up a lot to land Aaron Rodgers for a short window, borrowed resources from the future to try and improve in the present, and loaded up on big name veterans for a Super Bowl push. Obviously, none of that worked out very well.
This year things are a bit different. The Jets have gotten younger. They have a first year head coach and first year general manager. The team had a quiet offseason in no small part because of the constraints all of the moves of the last two years placed on the team.
You won’t find many people saying the Super Bowl is a realistic goal for the 2025 Jets. That, of course, doesn’t mean the team should get a free pass no matter what.
So let’s think about what success means for the 2025 Jets.
Results
Of course the NFL is a results-oriented business. No team could ever post a record like 3-14 and call a season a success. So what are results that could leave us feeling good about the team?
It depends on how ambitious you want to be. I will offer you three options.
Low Bar: Beat the spread
Our partners at FanDuel opened with a 5.5 win over/under for the Jets in 2025. This is a pretty logical place to start when we discuss what expectations should be for the team.
5.5 wins is a pretty low bar to reach. However, going over means the Jets will have improved upon their 2024 record.
It also seems worth noting how rarely the Jets have beaten preseason expectations. I searched as far back as I could for the team’s preseason FanDuel over/under in past seasons. I was able to get all the way to 2018. Compare the starting over/under with the actual win total.
In the last seven years, the Jets have only beaten the spread twice. Those two years were 2019 and 2022.
I would argue that 2019 deserves an asterisk. That season the Jets won their final game of the season, which took them from 6 (under) to 7 (over). That was a game against the Buffalo Bills, a team that had clinched its Playoff seeding and benched its starters in the first half.
If we have the belief that the most important part of this season is the new head coach and GM showing they are competent, beating the preseason win total would be a nice first step. It would also be a rarity by recent Jets standards.
Medium Bar: Be Alive in Week 17
One of the enduring themes of this era of Jets football is how uncompetitive the team has been. The Jets almost always been bad in recent years. Beyond that, they haven’t even come close to being good.
2015 was the last time the Jets woke up on the day of their final regular season game with a mathematical chance to make the Playoffs. During that stretch, only once have the Jets been alive as they took the field for their second to last game of the season (2022).
In 2024, ten of the sixteen teams in the AFC entered Week 17 with a mathematical chance of making the Playoffs. So you can be on the bottom half of the conference and reach this modest goal.
High Bar: Make the Playoffs
I think its understandable for Jets fans to be out of patience. The team’s 14 year postseason drought is the longest in the league and double the length of the second longest drought.
Fans who heard last year’s 5-12 team pumped up as a Super Bowl contender can be forgiven for being skeptical when the same people preach patience and trust in the plan.
Making the Playoffs doesn’t require a great team. In fact, sometimes it doesn’t even require a good team.
Seven teams make it in each conference. With good coaching and a few breaks, there’s nothing stopping a team from punching above its weight class and stealing the last Playoff berth. Jets fans are tired of watching this happen with another team and being told to wait their turn.
Justin Fields plays well enough to enter 2026 as the undisputed starting quarterback.
Obviously Aaron Glenn and Darren Mougey’s jobs don’t hinge directly on how well Justin Fields plays in 2025. They aren’t going to get fired if Fields has a bad season.
Still, Fields is a very important signing for the duo.
For starters it is an early test of competence. The Jets clearly targeted Fields as their top priority of free agency and gave him $30 million guaranteed over two years.
It’s the type of contract that will look like a bargain if Fields plays well and will go down as a pretty bad one if he doesn’t.
Fields is a bit of a reclamation project after flashing high end play but ultimately failing out with his initial team, the Chicago Bears.
This will be a first significant test of whether Glenn and Mougey are looking for the right attributes scouting reclamation projects and have the ability to coach them up.
Fields’ success is critical for the team in the short run. After all, he is the quarterback.
It is arguably more critical in the long run. The fastest path to making a mistake in the Draft picking a quarterback is to get desperate. A successful 2025 for Fields will allow the Jets to take their time and wait for the perfect prospect. If he is there in 2026, the Jets can pick him. If not, they will have the luxury of time.
If Fields fails, the pressure will start to ramp up. Make no mistake. The people in charge should ignore that pressure if the right prospect isn’t on the board. That’s easier said than done, though.
Have a day three pick in the NFL Draft start and succeed.
Here’s something that doesn’t get discussed all that much about Joe Douglas’ job performance during his tenure as Jets general manager.
His work in the early stages of the NFL Draft was pretty good. Of course there were some high profile whiffs that cost the franchise at critical positions, namely Zach Wilson and Mekhi Becton. Still, his early drafting produced plenty of talent. Garrett Wilson, Sauce Gardner, Alijah Vera-Tucker, Jermaine Johnson, Breece Hall, Will McDonald, and Joe Tippmann all look like successful picks at this point. Some players are better than others, but it’s tough to be upset with those results. We might even toss Olu Fashanu into that group based on the strong finish to his rookie season.
In the middle to late stages of the Draft, however, Douglas’ results were quite poor. Michael Carter II was the only player Douglas selected after pick 50 who turned into a multi-year quality starter while on his rookie contract.
Sure, there were a couple of picks who contributed. Jamien Sherwood developed into a quality starter on the final year of his rookie deal. Bryce Hall and Brandin Echols had their moments as depth players. If you want to include undrafted free agents, Bryce Huff was an excellent situational pass rusher. Tony Adams has been a low end starter/high end backup at safety.
Of course finding contributors like this is essential, but you also do need to find some players who can lead in carrying the load later in the Draft. Douglas didn’t. There are numerous explanations for this including his propensity to give away picks trading up and acquiring veterans and his obsession with measureables over football ability. In any event, this was a disappointing development given all of the expectations that Douglas would revolutionize scouting during his time with the team.
One of the players the Jets drafted on day three immediately developing into a starter would be a nice sign that perhaps things are improving with the new regime.
Most guys you pick late in the Draft never amount to anything or top out as depth players.
Still, you do need to hit big more frequently than the Jets have in recent years. There’s no time like the present. It’s a much smaller ask than a Super Bowl in year one.