Tape Tells All: The New York Jets Are A Mess

September 30, 2021

Justin Carter breaks down the Jets performance in Week 3 and evaluates whether there is any fantasy football upside with the team going forward in the 2021 NFL season.

Welcome back to Tape Tells All, the weekly series where I look at film for something that happened in the NFL this week.

Usually, I like to keep things positive, but the New York Jets are a mess. The team hasn't scored a touchdown in two consecutive weeks. Now, that's not even close to being a record or anything, but in the 2021 NFL where offense is at a high, it's notable when a team is this inept.

So, I wanted to explore the Jets some. Is there fantasy value left on the green side of the Meadowlands? Or is it time to jump ship on every player on this team?

Background Information

The Jets made a coaching change this offseason. And a quarterback change. And almost half of the initial 53-man roster was new. And there were 12 rookies.

The point is, the Jets look a lot different this year than last year. And yet...

New York is 0-3. Rookie quarterback Zach Wilson always was going to be the rookie quarterback with the least fantasy value -- Trevor Lawrence is a generational prospect, Trey Lance and Justin Fields are more mobile and theoretically have a decent floor when they get named starters (although Fields on Sunday was rough) and Mac Jones plays for the Patriots -- but it's been really, really bad.

Wilson threw two touchdowns and a pick in a competitive Week 1 game. Since then: no touchdowns, six interceptions, a 55.88 completion percentage, and nine sacks.

Looking just at this week, we saw Michael Carter and Ty Johnson combine for 41 rushing yards. We saw Corey Davis have a disappointing day. We saw Braxton Berrios crash back to earth after a shockingly decent start.

Is there any upside here? Should a single player on this Jets roster be rostered in redraft leagues? Let's take a look at some of the ups and downs of Week 3 and see if we can find anything good.

The Game Tape

First, you probably all saw this, right?

Yeah, that's a pretty normal Jets play at this point.

I mean, just no pass protection here. The Broncos send the linebacker over the middle and he gets "picked up" by Ty Johnson. I have that in quotes because...well, look at this play. Johnson offers minimal resistance while the Jets offensive line offers him zero help. Before there's time for any play to develop, Wilson is on the ground.

Here's another play. He isn't sacked, but the pocket collapses quickly, forcing Wilson outside and into a throwaway. At least one receiver actually has some separation, but you aren't going to be able to get the ball to anyone when you're running for your life. Credit to Wilson for not getting sacked, but also...yeah, flipping the ball out of bounds at the last second doesn't help you for fantasy purposes.

Here's a Corey Davis target. Davis has been disappointing and he probably should have brought this one in, but the Broncos defense is surrounding him pretty well, so despite the ball coming to him, Davis doesn't have room to cleanly bring in the ball.

Here's another incompletion to Davis. Just doesn't have space here. He's 40th among wide receivers in target separation, plus second in drops. 88th in true catch rate. 67th in yards per targets. Etc., etc., etc. Bad year for Davis so far, though there is a possible bright side:

If Wilson can start hitting on those air yards, Davis can find some success. Of course, Wilson is ninth in air yards but just 17th in completed air yards per PlayerProfiler. Wilson also has the second-worst completion percentage above expectation.

Sorry, got sidetracked on some data. Back to some film -- specifically, some film of Michael Carter. Remember when everyone was hyping him as a preseason sleeper? Well, he'd probably be...except he ranks 36th among running backs in opportunity and the Jets are running just 20.7 run plays per game. Playing from behind -- it's bad for running backs!

There's a lot of impressive stuff in the above video from Carter (from the New England game, not the Denver one.) He's a smart runner who makes the most of every opportunity, but...man, those opportunities aren't really there, because the QB play and the OL play are so bad that the Jets don't have the luxury of getting Carter the football.

Fantasy Impact

So, fantasy. The Jets and fantasy. What's the situation with that?

Let's just kind of run down things position by position based on how the first three weeks have gone.

Quarterback

Zach Wilson is the QB30 in overall points. Tyrod Taylor has played two games and is ahead of Wilson. No player below him has started three games. It's bad.

And none of the film I watched suggests it'll get too much better. The protection is bad. The weapons are mediocre. Wilson just keeps throwing interception after interception.

Wilson isn't rosterable in most leagues. He's literally the second-to-last QB I would want to play in a 2-QB league, with only Davis Mills worrying me more.

Running Back

This is where things get more interesting.

We looked at some Michael Carter film and he looks the part of a solid NFL back. But we also looked at some really poor opportunity numbers.

Without improvement across the board by this offense that allows Carter to stay on the field longer, he's a low-end RB3. It's a shame, but when he had 11 touches in a terrible offense in Week 3, there's not a lot of upside.

There's also the fact that this isn't really Carter's backfield yet. He took 43 percent of the snaps this week. Ty Johnson outsnapped him, getting 57 percent of the snaps. Johnson had just three carries, but was targeted five times to Carter's two -- for now, Johnson will get that passing down work, but he'll get so much less work than Carter that he can pretty much be ignored.

Wide Receiver

Corey Davis has struggled. Drops. Poor separation. But he's still the best receiver on this team and has the most upside. He was targeted 10 times this week and is a low-end WR3, even if he's likely going to continue to struggle to get open as teams devote a lot of energy to defending him. Davis will produce sometimes. He'll struggle sometimes. Zach Wilson might occasionally find him in the end zone for a touchdown.

Beyond Davis...things are rough. I want to say a healthy Jamison Crowder has WR3 upside, but we haven't see Crowder yet. Braxton Berrios has been provided a decent facsimile of Crowder, but he was down to three targets this week. Keelan Cole is back, but he also had two targets. Both of those guys are now off my radar -- this offense can't sustain them.

Elijah Moore is interesting, as he's the No. 2 receiver now. He has 14 targets over the past two weeks and has a higher aDOT than Davis. He's also caught just eight of his 18 targets, ranking 92nd among wide receivers in catchable target rate, with just 11 of his targets classified as catchable. He's also dropped three passes already. Moore is interesting, but not for redraft.

Tight End

We didn't even look at any tight-end video. There's a reason for that.

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