NY Jets’ upcoming schedule provides tantalizing opportunity

“You are what your record says you are.”

That statement often rings true. However, its validity depends on the sample size in question. The smaller the sample, the less a team’s record can truly tell us about who they are destined to be.

We’re just three games into the 2025 season. As frustrating as the New York Jets’ 0-3 start can be, it requires context.

For starters, this is a team that had an over-under of 5.5 wins going into the season, according to many sportsbooks. It’s not as if the team was built to come out firing on all cylinders. This franchise is in a transitional stage, and fans should have been ready for a rocky road to kick things off.

With the Jets debuting a new regime featuring a rookie head coach, a rookie offensive coordinator, and a rookie general manager, it should not be shocking that the team stumbled out of the gates with three straight losses – especially considering the schedule they faced.

New York’s first three opponents – each coming off 10+ wins in 2024 – have a combined record of 8-1 through the first three weeks of the season. Three of those wins were against the Jets, yes, but they have still gone 5-1 in games outside of their wins over New York.

Yet, in two of their three games against this 8-1 schedule, the Jets lost by only two points and held the lead with under 70 seconds on the clock.

I could hear your groan reading that sentence. It was a completely justified groan. Jets fans are sick and tired of moral victories. If there were moral standings in the NFL, the Jets would be tied for first place in the AFC East at 2-1, and they would have hung multiple banners in the MetLife rafters by now.

There are no moral standings, though – just plain-old standings. They feature one “W” column and one “L” column. For the Jets, the former says “0,” and the latter says “3.” Ultimately, those are the only numbers that matter.

But when it comes to predicting future Ws and Ls, the current Ws and Ls are not all that matter.

It is not for nothing that the Jets – a team with a 5.5 over-under, the second-youngest roster in the NFL, a rookie head coach, a rookie offensive coordinator, and a rookie general manager – are a couple plays away from a 2-1 record against a three-game slate of perennial playoff opponents who have gone 8-1 this season (5-1 outside of the Jets games).

The Jets need to start turning their moral victories into real-life victories at some point. That much is obvious.

When you look at their upcoming schedule, though, they have a fantastic opportunity to prove that their near-losses to playoff teams can be translated into victories against weaker opponents.

After facing an 8-1 slate to begin the year, the Jets’ next 10 games are against teams with a combined 9-21 record (.300). Nine of those 10 teams currently have a losing record, and the only one that doesn’t is the Cincinnati Bengals, who lost Joe Burrow and looked abysmal in their first game without him.

To boot, only four of those 10 games are true road games for New York. The Jets have five home games and one neutral game in London.

This stretch will reveal where the Jets truly stand in their first year under Aaron Glenn.

READ MORE: Evaluating current state of Jets' OL through Week 3

If the Jets are what their record currently says they are, they will continue losing games against the NFL’s fellow bottom feeders over the next 10 weeks. When December rolls around, they will have failed to beat even teams like the Miami Dolphins, Carolina Panthers, and Cleveland Browns, affirming just how far away they are from contention.

Moral victories against Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay will not matter if the Jets are still finding ways to lose closely to the Miamis and Clevelands of the world. At that point, the Jets will be proving nothing more than their knack for knowing how to lose.

But if their two-point losses to Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay are actually signs of potential, the Jets will translate it into victories over much weaker teams like Miami, Carolina, and Cleveland. Perhaps they will even sneak in some surprise wins over teams like Denver and Baltimore (two teams who are better than their current 1-2 records) as they start learning how to win games.

At 0-3, the Jets’ hopes of making the playoffs may be squashed. Few teams have ever rebounded from such a poor start to make the postseason, let alone one with as little firepower as this Jets roster.

That doesn’t render the rest of this season meaningless for New York. This year was always about learning whether Aaron Glenn and Darren Mougey are the right men to lead the franchise to sustainable success over the long haul. They still have 14 games to prove that.

The Jets’ three-game start, while wildly frustrating, planted small seeds of hope that Glenn and Mougey can accomplish that very goal. To ensure those seeds grow into something more than symbols of blind optimism, the Jets must stockpile victories over this upcoming stretch of winnable games.

Losing by two to Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay within the regime’s first three games can be chalked up as “moral victories” for the time being. But for those to matter in the long run, the Jets must prove that it means they are not far from being on par with those teams, which they can only do by establishing themselves as a tier above the NFL’s bottom feeders.

Of course, teams like Carolina and Cleveland have the Jets circled on their schedules as one of the teams they should beat. That will always be the Jets’ reality until they, well, start winning some darn games.

Nonetheless, it does not change the reality that New York’s upcoming slate of games will be a whole lot softer than the three-game set they started with, especially accounting for the context of an extremely young football team (both on the field and on the sidelines) having the chance to continue growing as the season progresses.

Based on win percentage, the Jets have the easiest remaining schedule in the NFL at .357, tying them with the Patriots. Based on DVOA (which does a better job of rating teams like the Broncos and Ravens, who started 1-2 but are clearly better than that), the Jets still have the third-easiest remaining schedule in the NFL.

The Jets have a golden opportunity to pick themselves off the pavement, dust off the past, and hit a stride.

As of today, the Jets are an 0-3 football team, and that’s all that matters. But the foundation is there for New York to forge a promising finish to the year. It’s up to them to prove they can build on that foundation. Moral victories have sufficed to this point, but with the state of their upcoming schedule, there are no more excuses for the Jets if they fail to start collecting real victories.

New York will not come out of this season as a contending team. But the Jets have a chance to come out of 2025 as a middle-tier team – putting them just one step away from the playoffs if they can take a leap in 2026.

That is the realistic bar New York should strive for as it prepares to tackle the NFL’s weakest remaining schedule.