If Jets keep flying they can become serious Super Bowl material
The New York Jets have made an astonishing start to their NFC East campaign and, having recently upset visiting Miami Dolphins 40-17, are suddenly a genuine contender to be crowned Super Bowl LVII champions.
After just five weeks the Jets and coach Robert Saleh are proving both the pundits and their long-suffering fans wrong.
Both the Jets and the New York Giants are now over 0.500 together for the first time since Week 9 in 2015, which catapults the AFC Eastern Division to being so strong this term.
For those who didn’t see this coming, and fancy backing either New York team, they can bet anytime during the season on either outfit to become Super Bowl winners in February.
The Jets, whose name was chosen so that it rhymed with the baseball team New York Mets, are no stranger to winning the illustrious prize as underdogs. They sent ripples through the sport by shocking the Baltimore Colts to clinch Super Bowl III at Miami’s Orange Bowl in 1969.
The unexpected can occur with heavily fancied teams taken to the limit and potentially turned over. The Jets kicked off the season as 125-1 outsiders to take the NFL’s top prize, lagging way behind the favorites of Buffalo Bills (6/1), Tampa Bay Buccaneers (7/1), Kansas City Chiefs (10/1) and Green Bay Packers (11/1).
However, bettors should try to strike as early as possible to get decent value. It is advisable to keep revisiting the latest Super Bowl odds for any sports betting on the 32 NFL teams.
The Jets are not quite yet the polished squad to threaten the rest of the field this term, but they are edging ever closer to fine tuning their tactics as they seek perfection and were tipped to potentially make this their breakthrough season.
Their defense needs to be tightened up, as they allowed 137 rushing yards at a 5.3 yards-per-carry clip against the Dolphins.
Their NFL statistics make pleasant reading in some areas, but the Jets certainly need to improve overall as they chase the glory to reach the Super Bowl final at Glendale’s State Farm Stadium in Arizona.
Following their success over the Dolphins they were joint fifth with nine Takeaways, 19th in Rush DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average), 21st in Defensive DVOA, 23th in Pass DVOA and 28th in Third-down Conversion Rate.
Although the Jets struggle with covering tight ends, and miss too many tackles, their run defense has been solid. Strong pass breakups from cornerbacks Sauce Gardner and DJ Reed means they are making an impact on the outside.
The duo are backed up by the likes of John Franklin-Myers, Bryce Huff, Jermaine Johnson, Carl Lawson, Jacob Martin, Sheldon Rankins and Quinnen Williams to get after the quarterback.
Combine this with the confident players for takeaway opportunities, thanks to slick footwork, and their fans will be beaming from ear to ear at the Jets’ overall performances.
Gardner and Breece Hall got the job done in style against the Dolphins. They were not the only to have made a major impact this season, with Johnson so far appearing to be a star in the making.
The Jets hit the Dolphins quarterbacks 16 times, which was only the second time in franchise history that they reached such a high number. Lawson made a remarkable career-high seven quarterback hits in that contest, to become the first Jets player to register seven hits in a single game since 2000.
Yet Jets’ supporters have been through this before, so will be far from complacent. The last time that the Jets also began their season with a promising 3-2 win-loss record was five years ago, and they slipped up to end the campaign with a disappointing 5-11 statistic.
Similarly, the Jets started off the following campaign with a 3-3 record only to fall apart and finish the year 4-12. Yet the structure of the current crop of players seems highly unlikely to make the same sort of nosedives that the Jets experienced in both 2017 and 2018.
Should the Jets keep soaring and manage to tighten certain areas, there’s no reason why history cannot repeat itself to bag an unpredicted Super Bowl crown.
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