Jets 2025 Season in Review

Three takeaways. All season. Three. The 2025 Jets defense forced exactly three turnovers across seventeen games — zero interceptions, three fumble recoveries — the lowest takeaway total in the entire league. We're going to unpack how a defense that bottomed out at takeaways still wasn't the worst story on this team, what Justin Fields and Breece Hall actually gave you when the offense was upright, and the one structural number that explains why the line of scrimmage broke this season in half. Three and fourteen. No playoffs. Eighth among AFC teams on the outside looking in. The Jets got muffed in 2025, and the data tells you exactly where.

Start with the team by the numbers, because the portrait is brutal and clean. The offense finished at minus 127.6 in total expected points added — how much every snap added or subtracted from scoring chances — twenty-ninth in the league. The defense allowed plus 155 in expected points added, and on defense you want that number deep in the negatives, so plus 155 ranks thirty-first. Three takeaways all year, 4.6 yards per carry on the ground at the sixtieth percentile, third-down conversions just under thirty-five percent. This wasn't boom-or-bust — it was a steady grind with a couple of October miracles: Bengals 39-38 in Week 8, Browns 27-20 in Week 10, Falcons 27-24 in Week 13. Everything else was double-digit losses, and the back half — Jacksonville 48, New Orleans 29, Patriots 42, Buffalo 35 — was a free-fall.

Now let's talk about the passing offense, and this is where the season really tilts. The Jets threw for 162.8 yards per game — bottom-five — and posted a passing expected points added of minus 100.9 across 559 attempts. That's minus 0.18 every dropback, sixteenth percentile. But the number that breaks this unit is sacks allowed: sixty. Sixty on 613 dropbacks, a 9.8 percent sack rate, third-most in football. You cannot run a passing offense when one in every ten dropbacks ends with your quarterback on the grass. Justin Fields started the first nine games and gave you a mixed bag — 128 of 204 for 1,259 yards, 7 touchdowns, just 1 interception, but 27 sacks absorbed and a completion percentage 1.7 points below expected. His signature snap came on a Week 4 fourth-and-one in Miami, third quarter, down 17 to 3 — Fields kept it, scrambled left, 43 yards untouched for a touchdown. Worth plus 6.25 expected points, one of the biggest single snaps of the Jets' season. Then Fields hit injured reserve by Week 12, Tyrod Taylor threw 5 picks in 6 games, and the passing game got muffed by attrition and protection, in that order.

Now let's dig into the rushing offense, because this is the one unit that actually held up. The Jets ran for 123.5 yards per game on 4.6 a carry — tenth in the league, seventy-second percentile. The expected points added still came in at minus 30.9 because the down-and-distance context was usually ugly, but on a per-carry basis this was a legitimate ground game. Breece Hall carried it: 242 attempts, 1,064 yards, 4 rushing touchdowns, and a rush-yards-over-expected of plus 142.4 — meaning he gained 142 more yards than an average back would have on the same carries. A real player having a real year on a team that couldn't protect a quarterback. Steady production, low variance — a bright spot in a dark room.

Next up, the pass defense, and this is where the season truly cratered. The Jets allowed 226.4 passing yards per game, gave up 36 passing touchdowns, and posted a passing expected points added allowed of plus 137 — and remember, on defense you want that negative, so plus 137 is third percentile, among the worst marks in football. Just 26 sacks, also bottom-six. And the takeaway number haunts everything: three. Zero interceptions all season. Three fumble recoveries. League-worst, third percentile. This defense never created a short field, never flipped momentum, never gave a struggling offense a gift. The one moment that captured what could have been came Week 10 against Cleveland — Browns driving, fourth-and-one at the Jets 33, Will McDonald looped through and sacked Dillon Gabriel for a seven-yard loss to seal a 27-to-20 win. Plays like that existed. There just weren't enough of them, and there were almost no balls in the air going the other way.

And the run defense — slightly less catastrophic, but still bad. The Jets allowed 140.9 rushing yards per game and 20 rushing touchdowns, with a rushing expected points added allowed of plus 17.7. Twenty-second percentile — not the bottom of the league, but well below average. The bright spots were short-yardage stands: two fourth-and-one stops against the Bills, a fourth-and-one stuff of Taysom Hill in New Orleans. They defended the goal line and the chain-marker better than they defended the open field. But over seventeen games, opponents ran 511 times for 4.7 a pop. Consistent, week after week. Not boom-or-bust. Just leaky.