Missed tackles. They are a frustrating fact of life in the NFL. Every team misses multiple tackles per game, but some are worse offenders than others. The New York Jets have been egregious in this fundamental facet of the game for years.
Different sites will give slightly different figures. Working with Pro Football Reference numbers, the Jets have been among the NFL’s least efficient tackling teams. In the six years from 2020 through 2025 the Jets ranked in the top half of the NFL just once, and
they ranked in the bottom six four times. Yikes! That’s not good. Here are the Jets rankings in the NFL in missed tackles since 2020:
2025 – 27th
2024 – 28th
2023 – 24th
2022 – 14th
2021 – 27th
2020 – 30th
2026 has been a different story thus far. The Jets have missed just 17 tackles in their first four games this season. That number makes them the NFL’s 10th best team in tackling. Bringing in sound tacklers appears to have been a Jets priority in the 2026 offseason, and it is paying dividends early this season. We have seen more wrapping up and less rolling into guys with the shoulder this season. It’s been great to see, but surprisingly it is a bit difficult to find much correlation in missed tackles to a team’s record.
Three of the top six teams this season in missed tackles are the Arizona Cardinals, Tennessee Titans and Miami Dolphins. They have combined for a 1-11 record this season. In fact, of the top ten teams in 2026 for missed tackles, just two teams have a winning record.
Going back to 2025, seven of the top 16 teams in missed tackles had losing records. It is a somewhat puzzling thing, but missed tackles don’t appear to be much of a factor in wins and losses. Nonetheless, if given a choice, a team would certainly prefer not to miss tackles. For the first time in a long while, the Jets have actually been good at this. If nothing else, it makes the defense more fun to watch. Perhaps it also is a leading indicator that the Jets are finally instilling a more disciplined approach on a team that has been badly in need of it for years. It may not amount to a big deal, but perhaps it’s a small silver lining in what has been a disappointing start to the Aaron Glenn era.
