The Jets are going to be bad in 2017. Like, bad bad. Possibly even 0-16 bad.
After getting rid of every expensive veteran contract on their roster, aside from Matt Forte, most of the football-watching world is of the opinion that these Jets will be flying on a full tank for their scheduled 16 games this season. Final destination? The 2018 NFL Draft and the prized No. 1 pick in a deep class of QB prospects.
Can the Jets achieve -- yes, achieve -- the first winless season since the 2008 Detroit Lions? Here's what our projections say.
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SportsLine
| Projected wins | In playoffs | Win division | Conference | Super Bowl |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4.6 | 1.0% | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.04% |
SportsLine projections aren't ever as extreme as the actual results of a season -- you generally aren't going to see a team projected to win one or two games on the low side or 14 or 15 on the high side. That said, the Jets don't have the worst projected win total in football -- that dubious honor goes to the Browns (4.5).
Vegas
| Win total | Playoffs | Division | Conference | Super Bowl |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4.5 (U -190) | 20/1 | 100/1 | 100/1 | 200/1 |
All odds via Westgate.
While projection systems are generally too conservative to post numbers at the extremes, bettors are under no such constraints. Even with a win total of just 4.5, bettors have push the Under to extreme measures. At some point, the books will be forced to consider dropping the total to four wins.
Experts
| |  |  |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 Record | 0-16 | 1-15 | 2-14 | 2-14 | 3-13 | 1-15 |
| Playoffs? | No | No | No | No | No | No |
Jared Dubin defends his 3-13 prediction:
Look, we all know the Jets are going to be terrible this year. They're fielding tanking questions seemingly every other day. You only have to do that when everyone knows you're going to be terrible.
But the thing is, being 1-15 or 2-14 terrible is really hard to do. Since the NFL expanded to 32 teams and eight divisions back in 2002, there have only been 20 occasions where a team finished with zero, one or two wins. That means there's only about a 4 percent chance of a team finishing with two wins or fewer. I'm not so much betting on the Jets being better than expected as I am acknowledging that 3-13 is still pretty terrible and will put them in the mix for the No. 1 pick.
