After all of the sound and fury; after all of the pomp and circumstance; after all of the quick shots of Taylor rooting for Travis, and a couple of referee’s calls — and non-calls — that will fuel the narrative for a few days, and the resurrection — is it real? Is it an outlier? Of the quarterback, this is what the Jets earned for themselves Sunday night at MetLife Stadium:
One more week.
One more game.
In the space of one football game — Chiefs 23, Jets 20 — we saw the very worst and the very best of the Jets, we witnessed all the hopeful things that can make you believe they really can end their 12-year playoff drought … and all of the reasons why that may remain an impossible pipe dream. We saw them spot the champions of the world 17 points.
And saw a 20-20 game that was there for the taking most of the second half.
If the Jets are going to do more than tease and taunt this year, then they must prove that next week in Denver, where the Broncos are begging to be piled on after narrowly avoiding an 0-4 start by barely escaping the brutal Bears on Sunday. It’s likely the Jets will be the betting underdog — as they’ve been to varying degrees in every game they’ve played so far.
Doesn’t matter. Can’t matter. If the team that played the middle 30 minutes Sunday shows up at Empower Field at Mile High next week, maybe we can still talk about salvaging a season for the Jets. But that’s a must. It’s non-negotiable.
“We’ve got to get over it quick,” Robert Saleh said, in what was as emotional a postgame gathering with the media as he’s had in his two-plus years on the job.
You could understand all of that. The Chiefs scored the game’s first 17 points and its final three. In between the Jets looked like the team everyone associated with it had fantasized about all across the last eight or so months — replete with a quarterback who was able to stand eye-to-eye and toe-to-toe with the great Patrick Mahomes and not blink.
The fact that it was Zach Wilson and not Aaron Rodgers is as important as it is improbable. But it does yield to the belief that a season that sits at 1-3 can still be rescued across the next 13 games, starting in Colorado.
“You can take positives out of any situation,” Saleh said. “No moral victories. But I would’ve liked to have seen if we could’ve pulled that off in that situation.”
That was as close as Saleh would come to ripping the game’s officials with the fervor he’d done on the field a half-hour earlier, when he’d drawn a 15-yard unsportsmanlike penalty while the Chiefs were kneeling out the game rather than trying to fend off one last drive from the Jets — which is what Saleh and the green-clad portion of the 80,461 inside MetLife surely believed should have been happening.
At issue was one no-call — Kansas City’s Donovan Smith manhandled Jermaine Johnson for five full seconds before Patrick Mahomes scrambled for 25 yards on third-and-23. And one questionable call — Sauce Gardner getting called for a defensive hold on third-and-20, a play that almost yielded Mahomes’ third interception.
Gardner was hot about the call, but also somewhat philosophical: “It’s like in basketball when you take a shot but don’t call the foul until you’ve seen if it goes in or not.”
Maybe those were bad calls. Maybe the Jets benefitted earlier, getting on the scoreboard with a safety when it seemed clear a facemask penalty had occurred outside the end zone. In the end, the truth is always this: You need to make enough plays to make the refs irrelevant.
And Wilson — as good as he was on the night, 28-for-39, 245 yards, two TDs and no picks — made the play that sealed the Jets’ fate, dropping a snap with 7 ½ minutes left in the game. And he gave the answer you need to give there: “I can’t have a play like that. I cannot drop the ball. Guys sacrificed a lot to be driving there and drop a snap … I cannot do that.”
So maybe there is hope for Wilson yet, who has learned a lot about accountability over the last year. Maybe there is hope yet for this Jets season.
“It’s a bunch of fighters in there,” Saleh said of his team.
Maybe. We’ll see. Starting next Sunday in Denver.