The New York Jets will travel to the New England Patriots week 18 and play at 1 p.m. Eastern on FOX. It is one of a few games that will have zero playoff implications.

The New York Jets season will mercifully end today, putting a bow on another long, and tough year filled with injuries, blowouts, and exciting endings.

For the Patriots, a team that is used to looking down the standings at the rest of the AFC, a loss would make it their worst finish in over three decades when they went 2-14 in 1992.

The Patriots won’t have a catastrophic injury to their star quarterback to blame for their 4-12 record. They have been the victim of poor play and lack of talent.

Don’t get too high and mighty though, Jets fans as one of their four wins came in an absolutely ugly game against New York back in Week 3.

The Jets currently hold roughly a 23% chance of holding on to the 8^th spot and about a 29% chance of improving their draft position according to playoffstatus.com. With the Jets being the sole 6-10 team, they would need a team sitting at 5-11 to win and the Jets to lose in order to improve their draft position.

But don’t believe for one second that the Jets are focused on draft position going into this game. They have other things on their mind. Namely, their current losing streak to the Patriots going back eight years.

The Jets have not beaten the Patriots in the last 15 matchups between the two teams. They have only won 2 of the 25 matchups and needed overtime in both of those games to win.

“The goal is breaking the losing streak, honestly,” linebacker Quincy Williams said.

“We gotta fix it. It’s a great time to do it. We understand what’s at stake playing against New England,” Mosley said. “Outside of all the noise going on in that building from what I’ve heard, we’ve gotta play our game and we got one more chance to do it together with our group.”

The Jets will once again turn to Trevor Siemian to be under center with Zach Wilson still not cleared from concussion protocol.

“It would be everything, so whatever it takes this week, we’re going to be trying like hell to get it done, by any means necessary,” said quarterback Trevor Siemian. “We want this one badly.”

Another thing the Jets will have to deal with in New England is the weathers. Six-10 inches of snow will have fallen in Foxboro by the time kickoff rolls around at 1 p.m. At that point, the snow will be winding down a bit, but temperatures will also be falling with a stiff northerly wind. By 3 p.m., air temperatures will be in the middle 20s and wind chills in the middle teens.

Given the awful weather and the fact that Siemian is under center along with the Patriots offensive struggles behind their quarterback, Bailey Zappe, the over/under for this game is around 29 points at most sports books, which would be the lowest total in an NFL game since 1993.

“There’s a lot of pride, a lot of heart, a lot of work, a lot of strain and pain that goes into preparation week in and week out,” coach Robert Saleh said. “There’s guys that want to finish strong and they’ve earned the right to be a professional athlete and they’ve earned the right to be on the football field, so getting the opportunity to go play one more time for this season, put it to bed and finish the season strong, I think that’s at the forefront of everybody’s minds.”

This season for the Jets was over four offensive plays into the season, at least today around 4pm ET it will be official. On to the offseason.

Jets’ Rodgers watching Week 18 for a chance to return to Lambeau in ’24

The New York Jets season will mercifully end today, putting a bow on a long and tough year filled with despair and just enough hope at times to keep us coming back for more. With the end of the 2023 season all eyes will then turn to the 2024 season where things will be much […]

Featured image via Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports