Sometimes in the NFL it’s really about surviving.
There are weeks where your team desperately needs a win. It doesn’t matter how you get that win. You just have to get it, someway, somehow.
The Jets faced one of those moments in Week 5 against the Cleveland Browns. A loss would have sent the team to a 1-4 record. The season would be spiraling out of control. The discussion would start to turn to the 2027 NFL Draft and coaching candidates for next season as both the team’s and Aaron Glenn’s respective
fates would seem sealed.
Amazon’s Al Michaels was mocked on Thursday night for saying Dallas’ game against Tampa Bay wasn’t a “must win” but it was a “can’t lose.”
Silly though it might sound, I viewed this game for the Jets as more of a “can’t lose” than a must win.
I don’t know that this victory turns the 2026 season around. I hope it will. It might.
It’s just more that the team could not afford to lose to the Browns because of everything that would have brought.
It wasn’t always pretty, but the Jets found a way to get the win that they so desperately needed. They might have committed 10 penalties. They might have thrown for only 120 yards after their first possession. The winning score might have been set up by a colossal Cleveland special teams miscue. But when the clock hit 0:00 in the fourth quarter, the scoreboard showed the Jets with more points than the Browns.
Of course that isn’t to say this was a poor performance across the board for New York. The defense had a stellar day a week after an embarrassing effort in Chicago. Everything was better for the team on that side of the ball.
The standout performance came from rookie David Bailey who had a breakout game with 3 sacks, a quarterback hit, and 7 to 8 pressures depending on what tracking website you want to use.
Bailey was a target of criticism all week in the media. It was difficult for me to understand why. Through the first four weeks, the Jets were not generating enough pressure as a defense, but Bailey was right at the top of most pressure stats among rookies. For whatever reason, Bailey took the blame over major free agent signing Joseph Ossai, who has done nothing, or fourth year player Will McDonald, whose feast or famine production is well-known, or a defensive tackle group that hasn’t shown an ability to collapse the pocket.
The number two pick in the Draft has high expectations, but listening to the New York media, you would have thought it was a catastrophe that Bailey wasn’t Lawrence Taylor within his first four games.
Even more puzzling was the implication that the Jets made a massive blunder passing on Bailey for Arvell Reese. Reese, of course was an outstanding prospect, who is likely to be an excellent player for the crosstown Giants. But his success is coming in a role where he is not primarily rushing the passer. If the problem was a lack of a pass rush from a first round pick, it’s difficult to understand how Reese, who just had his first sack yesterday in Week 5, was going to fix that.
In any event, Bailey quieted his critics against Cleveland. Many of those critics will undoubtedly declare Bailey a superstar off this performance. Once again, this will be premature. Bailey is a talented prospect who is producing. His game, particularly his pass rush moves, still needs refinement. He’s right on the trajectory where you want a highly drafted rookie to be. He’s doing things well with room to grow. That’s how he should have been viewed before the game. It’s how he should be viewed now.
Another star of this game for the Jets was Braelon Allen. Allen has been an afterthought for most of his three year career, essentially receiving his carries in short yardage situations and when Breece Hall needs a rest. The Jets might want to start reconsidering his usage.
This isn’t about one big game for Allen, who ran for a career high 116 yards and a touchdown on 24 carries. It’s about the skills he brings to the table. Allen is a true North-South runner who falls forward and picks up positive yardage almost every time he runs. Hall is a homerun hitter but inconsistent in reading his blocks and prone to too much dancing behind the line of scrimmage. None of this is to say that Hall is a player the Jets should trade to make room for Allen. But Allen’s ability to keep the Jets offense on schedule is something valuable that merits a heavier workload. In many ways, Allen’s strengths are Hall’s weaknesses and vice versa. This has the makings of a very effective running back duo if the Jets can see clearly.
All in all there were many standout performers in this one. T’Vondre Sweat, Jamien Sherwood, and Darrell Jackson Jr. were among the other standouts for a Jets defense that shut the Browns down for most of the game and finished with 8 sacks.
As mentioned earlier, the game wasn’t pretty. The Jets committed 10 penalties. The temptation will be to rebut this by noting how poor the officiating is. And to be clear, it was both poor and one-sided in Cleveland’s favor. However, aside from a shaky fourth quarter flag on Brandon Stephens, the blown calls in the Browns’ direction tended to be on plays where Cleveland committed clear penalties, and the officials refused to throw the flag. The calls against the Jets were largely correct, an indicator of sloppy play that must be cleaned up.
The Jets’ passing game was also an issue for a second consecutive week. There is no easy answer as to what is not working when the Jets throw the ball. The poor conditions surely played a role. The offensive line struggled in pass protection, particularly Joe Tippmann, who had maybe his worst game as a pro. The receiving group reached a depth emergency level once Kenyon Sadiq left the game with a concussion. All of the injuries have left the Jets with nobody other than Garrett Wilson showing the ability to produce a big play. And for a second straight week, Geno Smith showed an inability to function in the pocket. Smith can be forgiven for a lack of explosive passing plays given everything just mentioned, but a 14 year veteran needs to be able to navigate the pocket much better, find his outlets, keep the offense on schedule, and avoid taking bad sacks at a rate much better than we have seen from Geno the last two weeks.
So there are clear things that need to be cleaned up. The Jets need to cut down on the penalties and get more from their passing game if they want to beat higher caliber opponents going forward.
For this week, though, they got just enough to win.
This was one of those weeks that was all about survival, and survive they did.
Wins are precious things in the NFL. The Jets got one in Week 5, and that should be celebrated.
