What the Jets need to do to turn their losing culture around

The Jets are a loser franchise.  Plain and simple.  It’s been stated multiple times by safety Jamal Adams that the team goes into game weeks knowing they aren’t a good football team.  He knows that they give up after going down early.  The team has clearly given up on Todd Bowles despite them saying they love playing for him.

This team hasn’t been relevant since they went to two straight AFC Championship games, and they’re lucky that the Giants are so bad or else they’d be getting even more heat for being so incompetent.  They’re going to need to do a lot to change this losing culture around, and it starts at the top.

Fire everyone

Mike Maccagnan doesn’t deserve to stick around just because he drafted Sam Darnold.  If a twelve year old was GM for the Jets, he would’ve picked Sam Darnold as well.  He’s just lucky that Darnold happened to drop to him.  There was no skill involved in making that pick.

Obviously Todd Bowles is gone after this season, and even if the Jets win their last six games they should still fire him.  They completely gave up against Buffalo two weeks ago, and there have been multiple instances this season where the team just didn’t have any energy out of the gate.

If the Jets are even going to be successful, they’re going to need to gut their entire staff.  The GM, the head coach, the scouting, everyone.  The drafting has been unbelievably poor, the effort has been lacking, and the success clearly hasn’t been there.

Bring in a veteran leader on defense

There’s a big difference between bringing in a veteran leader for stability and signing several over the hill players who think they still have gas left in the tank.  The Jets’ biggest issue on defense is that while they have plenty of talent, they lack that killer instinct that keeps opposing teams out of the endzone.

In the past they’ve had guys like Kris Jenkins, who had plenty of experience, as the calming force of the defense.  For years, David Harris was that focal point.  He may not have been the best player on the defense during his final years with the Jets, but he sure knew what he was doing.

If the Jets are going to be successful on defense, having a calming force in the locker room and on the field makes a hell of a difference.  They have plenty of talent, especially in the back end.  What they need now is someone to formulate all of that talent and turn it into a successful unit.

Can lady luck strike again?

The Jets are a bad football team.  They’re going to be in the lottery once again, and they absolutely need to get this first round draft pick right if they’re going to have any kind of success over the next few seasons.  They had Sam Darnold fall to them, but they’ve also failed to hit on pretty much any of their other draft picks not named Marcus Maye or Jamal Adams.

Luck is not a strategy, but quite frankly sometimes luck plays into teams being successful.  Do you think the Patriots had any inkling that Tom Brady would be the greatest quarterback in NFL history when they drafted him in the sixth round?  Did the 49ers know Jerry Rice’s potential when they drafted him out of Mississippi Valley State?  Maybe, because they traded away two key picks to draft him, but they had no idea he would be the best wide receiver ever.

Sometimes things just happen to work out, and the Jets need a little bit of that in order to be successful in the future.  They’ve had a string of bad luck and bad picks, so eventually things need to balance themselves out.  It’s all a give and take, and the Jets deserve some take.

Jets fans have been waiting nearly 50 years for another championship.  They’re not getting one this year, or realistically next year, but even having some kind of hope would change the mentality of this team.  The Jets need to essentially start over in order to get this stench of losing off of them.  They need to do everything in their power to distance themselves from the current state of affairs, and need to get a little luck in the process.  It’s not impossible, but knowing the Jets, they’ll find a way to mess this up.