Pats Pulpit
On Thursday night, a national audience will get to see the New England Patriots for the second time this season. Head coach Mike Vrabel and company will host the New York Jets at Gillette Stadium — a rivalry game in more than one sense: the Patriots will debut their alternate Rivalry uniforms for the matchup.
To celebrate the occasion in style, they will need to defeat an opponent that has had its problems so for this year.
New coach, familiar results. Even under Aaron Glenn in his first year at the job, the Jets have struggled playing competitive football. The result is a 2-7 record and last place in the AFC East.
Record: 2-7 (4th AFC East)
Scoring differential: -46 (t-24th)
Turnover differential: -10 (32nd)
Offense: 21.7 points/game (25th), 285.6 yards/game (28th), 11 giveaways (t-17th), -0.060 EPA/play (27th), -0.051 EPA/dropback (27th), -0.072 EPA/run (22nd)
Defense: 26.8 points/game (26th), 329.0 yards/game (19th), 1 takeaway (32nd), 0.089 EPA/play (25th), 0.179 EPA/dropback (26th), -0.031 EPA/run (22nd)
When looking at the Jets’ statistics this season, one number immediately jumps off the page: the team has managed to register only one takeaway in its nine games so far this year, a fumble recovery by safety Andre Cisco in Week 6 against Denver. For comparison, no other team has fewer than six takeaways this year.
Despite being relatively solid in the turnover department on the other side of the ball, the Jets’ inability to take the ball away has resulted in the bottom ranking in turnover differential. It is not too big of an outlier either, though: the team as a whole has been defined by being entirely unremarkable on both sides of the ball, resulting in a 2-7 record and apparent fire sale at the NFL trade deadline.
The Jets struggled to open the 2025 season, losing each of their first seven games. However, as a closer look at those contests shows, most of them actually were relatively competitive: only two of those seven losses came by more than one score.
Week 1: 34-32 loss vs. Pittsburgh Steelers (0-1)
Week 2: 30-10 loss vs. Buffalo Bills (0-2)
Week 3: 29-27 loss at Tampa Bay Buccaneers (0-3)
Week 4: 27-21 loss at Miami Dolphins (0-4)
Week 5: 37-22 loss vs. Dallas Cowboys (0-5)
Week 6: 13-11 loss vs. Denver Broncos (0-6)
Week 7: 13-6 loss vs. Carolina Panthers (0-7)
Week 8: 39-38 win at Cincinnati Bengals (1-7)
Week 9: Bye
Week 10: 27-20 win vs. Cleveland Browns (2-7)
Recently, however, the Jets have managed to get off the schneid. Of course, they did so against two of the worst teams in football this season and in rather unconventional fashion: they needed a 15-point fourth quarter comeback to defeat the Bengals, and relied on two special teams scores to beat the Browns.
Still, every victory counts the same. And as a result, the Jets are headed into Week 11 at 2-7 and as the owners of the eighth-longest win...
