AFC East: Jets admit they’re still way behind the Patriots

Adam Gase, Kelechi Osemele, and Sam Darnold all separately acknowledged that the Jets are still far behind the Patriots when it comes to AFC East supremacy.

The New York Jets appear to be a team on the rise. They have a new head coach in Adam Gase, an ascending second-year quarterback in Sam Darnold, and a new multidimensional offensive star in Le’Veon Bell.

The one thing they don’t have a lot of?

Division championships. Gang Green has won just four of them in their entire franchise history – two in the 60s while playing in the AFL East (1968 and 1969), and two right around the turn of the millennium playing in the current AFC East (1998 and 2002).

Like their fellow AFC East brethren, the Miami Dolphins and the Buffalo Bills, the Jets have spent most of the past two decades staring up at the New England Patriots when it comes to the division pecking order. Ever since the arrival of head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady, the Pats have run roughshod over their three division foes.

Jets head coach Adam Gase recently made headlines when newly-acquired free agent linebacker C.J. Mosley relayed that Gase told players one of the primary reasons he came to the Jets was so he could beat the Patriots. Skeptics and naysayers will be quick to point out that Gase had a difficult time doing that while he was skipper of the Dolphins, of course, but it’s still the right kind of aggressive rhetoric you’d want to hear from your new head coach as a player.

That said, it looks like Gase and several other prominent Jets members are not above acknowledging the corresponding challenge that faces them in trying to slay the New England dragon.

"“(The Patriots have) done this for a long time,” Gase told reporters recently. “And you know where you stand when you play those guys, and you compete against them twice a year, and you have to go head-to-head with them within the division against the same teams they’re playing. You find out where you are really fast. My point to the whole thing is: We’re behind. They got a big head start — multiple years, a decade-plus, almost two. So, we have to work. When we’re in the building, we have to do everything we can to keep getting better, because we’re playing catch-up.”"

Gase, a noted quarterback whisperer, is now paired with Southern California product Sam Darnold, who had an up-and-down season as a rookie in 2018. While the 21-year-old has oodles of talent, he’s still a raw prospect who will need every bit of Gase’s coaxing to blossom into the kind of quarterback who could challenge the Patriots’ defense consistently.

While Darnold sounds as if he’s up to that task, he also echoed Gase’s sentiment in admitting that the Jets are playing catch-up to the Patriots.

“It’s no secret that they’ve kind of got (winning) wired down,” Darnold said. “They’ve been doing it for 19 or so years…. So, it’s always kind of chasing them, especially in this division… That’s the goal, but at the same time, it’s about us. What can we do to get better every single day?”

Jets left guard Kelechi Osemele was the most blunt when it came to addressing to the same topic.

"“I don’t think we’re close at all (to) what they’re doing up there in New England,” Osemele told reporters. “We’re kidding ourselves if we’re saying we’re caught up with New England. That’s why we’re getting these extra camp days in and reporting early. So we can lay that foundation down and catch up.”"

Only time will tell if the Jets can close the gap on the Patriots this season, or if it will take some combination of Brady and Belichick retiring for New England’s reign of terror atop the AFC East to finally come to an end.