Adam Gase made one promise shortly after the Jets hired him as head coach. Come November and December, his team would play “meaningful games.”
That’s not exactly a stop-the-presses proclamation, but for a team that hasn’t been to the postseason in eight long years, it sounded pretty good. One problem: Entering October, said summer promise is extinct. The bruised-and-battered Jets are winless through three games.
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Since 1980, exactly six of 176 teams to start a season 0-3 have gone on to make the playoffs. That’s 3.4 percent, a statistic which paints a pretty bleak picture. The Jets’ season — or at least their playoff hopes — are virtually over.
The math isn’t on New York’s side, but history kind of is.
The 1981 Jets are one of those six teams.
“Anything is possible,” Marty Lyons, a defensive lineman on that team, said.
The Jets didn’t begin 1981 with high expectations. Many believed it would be the end of Walt Michaels’ tenure as head coach. He had replaced Lou Holtz in 1977, but went 3-11. After showing some promise with back-to-back 8-8 campaigns in 1978 and 1979, the Jets again struggled in 1980, finishing 4-12. The team had talent (Wesley Walker, Mark Gastineau, Marty Lyons, Joe Klecko, Greg Buttle). Michaels couldn’t put it together. So with New York in the midst of its longest playoff drought (12 years) before this current stretch, Michaels began the season on the hot seat.
It wasn’t long before it was boiling.
The Bills blew out the Jets in the opener, 31-0. The team then lost a heartbreaker to the Bengals, 31-30. Against the Steelers in Week 3, Michaels and Co. endured another thumping, 38-10.
The media aimed at the Jets, struggling quarterback Richard Todd, and the need for a new man in charge.
Those in the locker room managed to tune it all out.
“Entering that season, I believed we had the chance to be pretty good,” receiver Wesley Walker said. “But I always felt that way. Even when we were losing the years before, I always felt we were better than the next team and I was better than the next guy. We always had a confidence. We always believed in ourselves. We believed in the staff. We had high hopes entering that season and those early struggles weren’t going to change that.
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“You have to remember: This was New York. And in New York, everything is magnified. The press was on us. They expected us to start pointing fingers, calling out the coaches. They try to divide you up. We were just able to ignore it. Given those situations, bad teams throw in the towel. We decided we weren’t going to do that.”
There wasn’t any one incident that happened after the loss to the Steelers in Week 3 to change anything with the team. Lyons, Walker said, always gave impassioned speeches to rile up those in the locker room. He’d throw chairs and break tables. But that was the same win or loss. Practices didn’t change, either. Back then, there were no guidelines or regulations, so they were long. Making them longer wasn’t anything new. If Michaels didn’t like how things were going, he’d start practice over. There were days New York would be out there, full-contact, for three to four hours.
But two mental adjustments instigated the rally, from what Walker recalls. The first: Players started to police themselves. Leaders — both vocal and quiet — took what Michaels preached and reiterated it everyone in the locker room. Then, the team decided to ignore their record. They couldn’t make up three games at once. So they didn’t try to.
“We had to get that first win,” Lyons said. “You can’t win two without winning one. After you win that first game, the next week at practice, everyone feels a little different. Then you win another, and it gets even better.
“You have no idea how much one win can uplift a team.”
The Jets beat the Oilers in Week 4, 33-17, before tying the Dolphins, 28-28, in Week 5. During the early 1980s, Lyons said, the Dolphins were the present-day Patriots. That tie felt as good as a win because it showed the Jets could hang with the league’s best. New York then beat the Patriots (28-24) and Bills (33-14) to avenge the early-season loss. After a minor hiccup against the Seahawks in Week 8 (19-3), the Jets rattled off five straight wins.
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They closed the season winning seven of eight to finish 10-5-1 and earn one of the AFC’s two wild card spots.
Todd bounced back after a sluggish start to throw for 3,231 yards, 25 touchdowns and 13 interceptions. Walker led all Jets receivers with 770 yards and nine touchdowns. Lyons, Klecko, Gastineau and Abdul Salaam combined unofficially for 66 sacks. Sacks did not become an official statistic until the strike-shortened 1982 season, so the exact numbers aren’t recorded.
The season marked the first time the Jets qualified for the playoffs since 1969 — the year after their Super Bowl title. While New York lost to the Bills in the playoffs, 31-27, after Todd threw an interception in the end zone late in the fourth quarter, it changed the Jets’ culture. They made the playoffs again in 1982, 1985 and 1986. In 1982 they advanced to the AFC Championship game, where they lost to the Dolphins, 14-0.
“When you’re a professional, a real professional, you know what’s at stake,” Walker said. “You know it’s hard to win. We had good coaches who prepared us for things we would talk about. I had a coach, Joe Walton, who used to tell me, ‘You’re not as good as you think you are, but you’re not as bad, either.’ That always stood out to me as a good philosophy.
“Losing fires you up, That’s what we had to do. Every time we lost I felt we’d pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and turn it around. It took a couple of games that year, but we turned it around, and we made the playoffs.”
The present-day Jets will play the Eagles this Sunday. They, unlike their 1981 counterparts, are fighting injuries as much as their opponents. Quarterback Sam Darnold, linebackers Jordan Jenkins and C.J. Mosley, defensive end Quinnen Williams, along with receivers Quincy Enunwa and Demaryius Thomas, have all missed games with injuries. Tight end Chris Herndon and linebacker Brandon Copeland are suspended. Combine that with the ineptitude of the offensive line and it’s an awful lot of early-season adversity.
But if the Jets can get past all of that, maybe they can turn their season around. Williams will play against the Eagles. Darnold should be back within the next two weeks, potentially Sunday, too. The rest, absent Enunwa, will eventually return.
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The odds still aren’t likely.
But all it takes is one game.
“I wish we could say we had a magic wand or something where you just flip a switch and that’s how you start winning games,” Lyons continued. “But once we got the first win, before you knew it, we were winning every week. We weren’t thinking about losing any more. Once we started winning, we never thought about that 0-3 start.
“You can’t get caught up in percentages. You can’t get caught up in the statistics and analytics and what teams have done in the past because you don’t live in the past. Live in the present. Say ‘You know what? We’re going to prove you wrong.'”