The Jets lost in Week 2 to the Buffalo Bills so it is our sad duty to give out anti-game balls to those who did not deliver for Gang Green.
Justin Fields
One of the interesting dynamics of Justin Fields is his polarizing nature. Throughout the media and the NFL fanbase, you have people who talk about Fields like he’s Josh Allen. You also have people who talk about him like he’s Anthony Richardson. It has struck me that Fields is both wildly overrated and wildly underrated at the same time.
The first two weeks of the 2025 season do much to explain this phenomenon. At this point of his career, I think it’s fair to say that the most accurate assessment of Fields is he’s a low level starter/high level backup type quarterback. He arrives at this place in a different way than say Gardner Minshew. Minshew gives you the occasional big game or really bad game, but for the most part he gives you steady yet unremarkable play.
Fields. on the other hand, has highs that are really high and lows that are really low. One week he can look like a top ten player at the position. Another he can look like the absolute worst.
I came across an amazing fact last night looking at Fields’ career stats game by game. Even though he is in his fifth year in the NFL, Fields start Sunday was just the 46th of his career. That’s less than three seasons of games.
That isn’t the amazing fact. It’s this. In that short span, the Buffalo game was the tenth time Justin Fields posted a QBR at least 40 points lower than the QBR in his previous game.
It’s a staggering monument to inconsistency. You can’t drop 40 points in a game unless two things are true. Your previous game was really good, and the game that followed was truly dreadful.
If Fields doesn’t start finding more consistency, he will fall into the classic category of journeyman who is always good enough to find a job but never good enough to keep it.
For the Jets this season, the biggest burden isn’t getting Fields to find a high level. It’s about making the low moments not as low. Josh Allen played a poor game by his standards on Sunday, but he was still able to hit some timely passes and break a pivotal 40 yard run on an early third down.
Fields meanwhile was responsible for sinking the Jets offense. I don’t know any other way to put it. Many of the throws he missed were passes an NFL quarterback needs to hit in his sleep. If Fields connects on these, I don’t know that the Jets win, but they at least would have had a functional offensive performance.
Fields left the game with a concussion. The Jets must hope he is ready soon. Tyrod Taylor might be a respected veteran. He certainly can hit the passes Fields missed on Sunday, but it’s tough to envision him doing much to elevate the Jets offense the way Fields showed he was capable of doing in Week 1. But Fields also needs to find that Week 1 form again. At the very least, his bad can’t be this bad.
Aaron Glenn
The NFL is a humbling league. Succeeding in this league is a lot harder than you think it will be.
After decades in the league as a player, scout, and assistant coach, I’m sure Glenn was already aware of this. He is receiving this lesson anew, however, as a head coach.
Glenn spent much of the offseason and training camp exuding confidence in his and his coaching staff’s ability to improve the Jets and get rid of the team’s chronic undisciplined play in 2024.
Jets training camp in many ways resembled the classic training camp with the new coach. Player after player spoke about how everything was different, and there was a new sense of accountability in the air.
I think Tony Adams might have had the most honest comment comparing the new era of Jets under Glenn with what things were like with Robert Saleh and Jeff Ulbrich.
“The last coaches preached discipline and we didn’t listen.”
Accountability is easy to talk about. It is far less easy to instill.
In the lead up to the Buffalo game, Glenn received a lot of praise for cutting Xavier Gipson over a costly fumble. I wasn’t entirely sure why he deserved so much praise. The move seemed a day late and a dollar short to me. Gipson never should have been on the roster in the first place, and Glenn waited until he predictably made a mistake that led to a loss to make a move.
But ultimately accountability isn’t about cutting players who make a mistake. It also isn’t about yelling at players who make mistakes in view of the camera so that fans can talk about how you aren’t letting mistakes slide.
It’s about making those mistakes less frequent. Sometimes that leads to cuttings, benchings, or other forms discipline. These are means to an end, though.
The Jets have a long way to go to become a disciplined football team. We saw bad penalties, glaring mistakes, guys in the wrong places, and all of the hallmarks of a bad football team.
Look, it wasn’t realistic for Glenn to fix everything in two weeks. But he should have been the first to realize that rather than declaring everything was going to be great.
Most Jets fans I encounter are realistic about this team. We don’t expect a winning record or a Playoff run this year. What we want is a team that maxes out its ability and forces the opponent to earn victories. We don’t want to see the Jets hand the game to the opposition. Unfortunately that’s what we have so far.
And part of being a difficult opponent means showing fearlessness. Glenn kicking a field goal down 20 points or punting on a fourth and one in the third quarter down 20 doesn’t suggest a coach who is going down swinging. That seemed to be true team-wide.
Micheal Clemons
I don’t want to be too hard on people here, but Clemons is just not my kind of player. In fact, he’s pretty much the opposite of everything I want in a player. He isn’t productive. He talks a lot but never backs it up. He’s undisciplined, and he makes dumb play after dumb play.
A relative lack of talent (by NFL standards) isn’t necessarily the type of thing that renders a player useless. One of the greatest players in Jets history might have been the least conventionally talented player every time he took the field. Wayne Chrebet was small and pretty slow. But he was also smart and reliable. He worked on his technique. He always got to the right spot. And he always caught the ball when he had a chance. Whether or not Chrebet had a ton of physical ability, you knew it was a close to automatic first down when a quarterback looked his way on third down.
Of course the Chrebet’s of the world are few and far between, but plenty of players carve out careers as useful role players by being smart and disciplined.
What’s frustrating about Clemons is I do believe he has natural ability. He just never channels it into anything other that boneheaded penalties like his roughing the passer on Josh Allen that extended an early Buffalo scoring drive that set the tone for the game.
Tony Adams
To be honest, I think Adams is just overexposed on this current Jets team. On a defense loaded with talent like the Jets had in 2023, you could probably live with him as a starter. He’s really more of a depth/situational player, though. Leave him out there for too long, and he’ll commit a drive extending penalty along with otherwise poor play.
Brandon Stephens
You could probably give a lot of Jets defenders anti-game ball recognition for this game, but Stephens earns one from me. He was one again brutal in coverage, but what really earned it was the total lack of effort he showed on James Cook’s touchdown run.
Watch #21 Brandon Stephens on this play!
pic.twitter.com/LwYvHQIV5W
— Ryan Sampson (@RyanMSampson)
September 14, 2025
Justin Fields – 0.54
4 targets 
️ 2 catches, 18 yards allowed
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