The Jets nearly won enough games in 2015 to get to the playoffs. This year, they’ve won only once.
Coach Todd Bowles thinks that they need to get back to square one.
“We’re not getting blown out,” Bowles told Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News. “Somehow in the fourth quarter, we press. Plays that we run correctly in the first three quarters, we don’t execute them in the fourth quarter on either side of the ball. We just have to learn how to finish. We have to learn how to win all over again. Last year was last year. We have to learn how to win again this year.”
Learning to win includes learning how to avoid giving up possession of the ball, which starts with quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick.
“He can’t put the game on his shoulders and try to be Superman,” Bowles said. “If it’s not there, it’s not there. Whether we take the sack or we throw it out of bounds or we punt and move on, ball security is what wins in this league. The big difference between last year’s first quarter and this year’s first quarter is that we got a ton of turnovers. And this year, we gave up a bunch of turnovers. That’s really the 3-1 and 1-3 scenario when you break it all down.”
There’s some evidence that change could be coming. Receiver Brandon Marshall said Friday that the team is ready to turn it around.
“I said this on Wednesday, that we had our best practice that we’ve had since I’ve been here in two years,” Marshall said, via Darryl Slater of NJ.com. “But we truly had the best week since I’ve been here. I mean, an awesome week. We had a championship week. Usually, when you approach practice that way, it happens for you on Sunday.”
A lot will need to happen well for the Jets if they hope to win in Week Five, which takes them to Pittsburgh for a game against the Steelers.