Jeff Ulbrich knew his audience.
The interim head coach of the New York Jets knew that darkness is more than just a metaphor for the quarterback on whose shoulders the franchise rests.
So after the Jets’ fifth straight loss, Ulbrich leaned on the footage.
His message to a team that blew an eminently winnable divisional game against the New England Patriots?
“This is a moment of darkness,” Ulbrich told his locker room after the rebuilding Patriots defeated them 25-22. “And we understand that the outside world is going to be very noisy now. But the one thing I know in life is that when it gets dark and the going gets tough, you work. And you point the finger at yourself and you look inward and think what can I do better?
Rodgers is intimately familiar with the darkness in a way that perhaps no one else in the league is.
The four-time MVP spent four nights in total darkness in 2023 as he contemplated retirement. Instead of hanging it up, Rodgers emerged from his meditative retreat to facilitate his trade from the Green Bay Packers to the Jets.
Rodgers’ latest appearance from literal darkness gave the Jets a powerful injection of hope. But after the Jets fell to last place in the AFC East on Sunday, can he find that strength again?
But with New York’s offense struggling to get on the same page without penalty and delay of game, and the Jets defense struggling to stop the run as special teams miss punts every week, can Rodgers find the strength to lead the Jets again to light?
As the shadow of his hat fittingly shrouded his eyes in darkness during his post-game press conference, Rodgers believed so.
“I’ve been in the dark,” he said. ‘You have to go in there. Make peace with it.”
The Jets loss to the struggling Patriots spelled more than a week of trouble
What would peace in the darkness look like for Rodgers?
The quarterback took advantage of Ulbrich’s instruction to point more to himself than to others.
“Offensively, our goal has to be just score 30,” Rodgers said after a 17-of-28, 233-yard day, including two touchdowns. ‘It doesn’t matter what the other parties do. We are confident in our defense and [special] teams, but if we don’t score thirty, we are underperforming.
“This offense can do that every week.”
Rodgers’ words echoed team owner Woody Johnson’s assertion when he fired head coach Robert Saleh on Oct. 8, insisting that this was the best Jets roster he had put together and thus should be better than 2-3.
Since then, the Jets have further strengthened both sides of the ball by trading for receiver Davante Adams and reaching a contract agreement with holdout edge rusher Hassan Reddick.
It doesn’t matter – they’ve now lost five straight games, including three after Saleh’s firing, two with Adams and one with Reddick.
And the Jets haven’t reached Rodgers’ 30-point threshold once in eight tries.
Their 22 points Sunday were their most since putting up 24 against the Patriots five weeks earlier, a mark that is still below the Patriots’ 25 points allowed per game.
And while a missed 44-yard field goal and a missed extra point attempt hurt the Jets in this loss, so did the continued operational disarray. The Jets used their first-half timeouts before the second quarter started, and also committed five of their eight first-half penalties.
“On one of them we got out of the group too late, on one of them I was trying to get the protection right, on one I felt like we could have gotten out, but it was fine to take with us [a timeout] there,” Rodgers said. “Our operation was a bit slow at times.”
Operational lethargy would bite the Jets again in the fourth quarter, as they took another stoppage of play on a 2-point conversion attempt after scoring the go-ahead goal with 2:57 to play. The 5-yard penalty more than tripled what would have been required for the play. The botched play meant the Patriots needed a touchdown, but not an extra-point attempt, to win.
The Patriots ultimately got both, as the Jets defense followed the offense’s lead and faltered.
Rodgers defended the decision while accepting its consequences.
“They set the clock for 8 o’clock and we had a service and a motion,” Rodgers said. “By the time it came down to it, the defense they were playing was not good for the play that was called. So I thought, let’s just drop it back to the 7, not that big of a difference. I like the game we played, but they didn’t bring any pressure.
“And I guessed wrong, they guessed right.”
Jets have a quick turnaround before Texans arrive
The Jets will get a chance to cleanse their palate on Thursday. But they’ll have to do so against a 6-2 Houston Texans team whose quarterback is 18 years greener than the NFL but is currently more productive.
The Texans’ offense was shakier than last season, when CJ Stroud earned Offensive Rookie of the Year honors. But Houston’s defense ranked second in yards allowed this week and 11th in points allowed.
Against the same Patriots team that just defeated the Jets, the Texans won 41-21 two weeks ago. That Patriots team had quarterback Drake Maye starting for four quarters; the Jets faced him for just 16 minutes before he was evaluated and subsequently ruled out due to a concussion.
Ulbrich, who described himself and the team as “pissed off” and “hurt,” emphasized the importance of cleaning up game operations and running them more consistently.
“We don’t carry out executions at critical moments, especially on the line,” Ulbrich said. “We say this is not who we are. But it is who we are until we prove otherwise.
Ulbrich expressed confidence in the Jets’ ability to turn a corner, and confidence in the team’s ability to emerge from the darkness, as she and Rodgers had done previously.
The team will lean on bright spots like Rodgers and Garrett Wilson’s best game of the season, with defenders focused on Adams. The Jets’ defense allowed fewer yards than they had in six weeks, but New York also allowed a shorthanded group to convert on seven of 15 third-down attempts and three of four trips to the red zone.
Ulbrich said he will “take a close look at everything,” including the best plan moving forward at kicker after Greg Zuerlein’s sixth missed field goal of the season.
Hard work and responsibility are the Jets’ tickets out of darkness, Ulbrich said.
“If we do that collectively, which I think we will do, that’s your only chance to get yourself out of this,” Ulbrich said. “That’s your only chance to improve and fix some of these mistakes.” That’s where we are lucky.
“The character of this dressing room [is] are going to show who we are.”
