FOXBORO, Mass. — It was about a year ago when Mike Vrabel took a trip to New York City to meet with some NFL friends. When he sat down for dinner with a reporter at a busy Italian restaurant in the West Village, a man a couple tables over recognized him. The man stared for a while. Eventually, he mustered the courage to ask for a photo — Vrabel obliged. Before leaving, the man, wearing a Jets hat, asked him where he was going to coach next.
“You gonna come to the Jets?” the man asked.
Vrabel smiled. “We’ll see in January.”
On Friday, Vrabel stood outside the Patriots locker room and embraced every player that passed by him with a hug, a handshake and a smile, like he does after every win, in every stadium — and there have been a lot of them already. The Jets, meanwhile, were in the other locker room, shaking their heads and shrugging their shoulders, another loss in a lost season.
On that autumn night in New York, Vrabel had no idea where he’d end up. He was on a head coaching sabbatical, serving as a consultant for the Cleveland Browns. He was gathering information to figure out which potential job opening would be the best fit for him — with Jerod Mayo in his first season as head coach in New England, there was no indication that the Patriots job would be open at all. It was a different story with the Jets; Robert Saleh had already been fired.
By the end of last season, the Patriots won four games. The Jets won five. Both teams felt directionless. Now the Patriots are 9-2. They found their head coach. They have their quarterback. The Jets are 2-8. They do not have their quarterback, not even close. They have a head coach who, broadly, the team believes in, but this is a Jets team at the very beginning of its rebuild. The Patriots are on a fast track toward Super Bowl contention. All of a sudden, these franchises couldn’t be further apart. That was evident throughout Thursday night’s game — a 27-14 loss for the Jets — but nobody needed a head-to-head matchup to figure that out.
“MVP” chants for Drake Maye got louder as the game went on. He’s a second-year quarterback who looks like a star. There weren’t many Jets fans at Gillette Stadium on Thursday, but any poor souls who made the trip were subjected to a quarterback, Justin Fields, who late in the game bounced a third-down throw off the back of his left tackle’s head.
When that Jets fan pulled Vrabel for a photo in New York last year, he had no idea he was staring at a coach on the verge of potentially inflicting another decade of torture upon his beloved football team. Vrabel was the coach the Jets wanted. But the Patriots job opened up — he wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to coach the team he played for in the NFL, just like Glenn only ever really wanted to coach the Jets. Two months into the season, these are two men on far different journeys.
The summation of Glenn’s message to the team in the locker room after another loss in which the Jets could barely pass the ball and the defense withered away over four quarters: “AG”s message was, ‘We’re going to be a good team,’” said linebacker Quincy Williams.
Going to be. But not yet. Not like the Patriots. (That sound familiar?)
“That is a well-coached team that has a quarterback that’s playing really well, which we all knew,” Glenn said. “We got to do a better job just across the board … man, the one thing that really just sticks out is details and discipline. That was a box that we didn’t check off today.”
Maye completed 25 of 34 passes for 281 yards, a touchdown and no interceptions (the Jets have yet to intercept a pass all season, and they’ve only forced one turnover, an almost incomprehensible lack of ball production). Adding to the insult: When cornerback Qwan’Tez Stiggers nearly intercepted a Maye pass, he collided with a teammate and suffered a hamstring injury. The Jets had one sack and only hit Maye three other times. There were missed tackles, bone-headed penalties and a moment where Jarvis Brownlee got beat in coverage on third-and-10 by DeMario Douglas then forgot to touch him when Douglas hit the ground after making the catch, allowing Douglas to jump up and gain another chunk of yards.
Running back Treyveon Henderson was left wide open in the back of the end zone on a touchdown. Cornerback Brandon Stephens got juked so badly by Douglas in the first quarter that, when his body went in the opposite direction he bumped into a teammate, leaving Douglas wide-open. Earlier, defensive end Micheal Clemons charged into the backfield and ran right past Henderson, and the rookie running back ended that play in the end zone.
“The only thing that really stops us is us offensively,” Vrabel said after the game, referring to “little things” and a few unforced errors.
He was certainly not referring to the Jets.
“We got to get that s— right,” Brownlee said. “We can’t come into the game and (have) s— just go out the other ear.”
Adonai Mitchell showed a knack for getting open in his Jets debut, but also had multiple drops. (Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
As the Patriots set their sights on an AFC East title, the reality is the results of these games, win or lose, don’t really matter for the Jets. These last two months (eight games, counting Thursday night), might as well amount to a prolonged preseason. It’s all about evaluation. Figuring out who on the roster now needs to be there in 2026, who needs to play a role when things — as Glenn has repeatedly promised — start to turn for the better.
That gets to something that’s making the task — evaluation — a whole lot harder: Fields. As long as he’s the quarterback, the Jets are going to have a harder time evaluating the pieces around him. Fields’ performance on Thursday night wasn’t entirely on him to be sure — wide receiver Adonai Mitchell had two bad drops, including on a perfectly thrown deep ball (a rarity this season, in that a deep ball was attempted at all) that should have gone for a huge gain. Tight end Jeremy Ruckert dropped a fourth-down pass late in the fourth quarter too.
The Jets’ first drive was a thing of beauty — the first opening drive all season that ended in a touchdown. They did it by featuring Fields’ best skill: his running ability. It was a 14-play, 72-yard drive that included four third-down conversions and ended with a 5-yard Fields touchdown run.
And that was about where the positives ended for Fields. He only had 75 passing yards until late in the fourth quarter, and finished with 116. He had 23 passing yards in the first half; he’s 32nd among all quarterbacks in first-half passing yards.
He’s thrown for fewer than 100 yards in four of nine starts, fewer than 120 in five starts, and he’s yet to throw for 300. It took Zach Wilson 21 starts before he had his fourth instance of less than 100 yards — and Wilson was benched (for Mike White) after one of them, a performance also in New England in 2022, when he threw for 77 yards.
“Not good enough,” Fields said. “You know, we lost the game, so wasn’t good enough. Every time we lose, my performance isn’t good enough.”
Glenn was kinder to his quarterback — a quarterback that he pushed to sign this offseason, after all. His comments don’t suggest Fields will be losing his starting job just yet.
“Listen, there were some good things, really good things,” Glenn said. “I thought he put some balls out there. We got to have some guys that make some plays for him, too. I know for a fact he’s going to say there are some things he can do better. We have to watch the tape, but I thought there were some good things he did out there.”
Mitchell had a rough day in his Jets debut, but he flashed some impressive athleticism and was breaking open on most of his routes. John Metchie scored a touchdown (though the defensive back covering him tripped on the play to leave him wide open). Arian Smith wasn’t targeted at all. Breece Hall was only targeted twice in the passing game. And this was all while the Jets’ offensive line kept Fields mostly clean — he was sacked twice and hit four times. In the fourth quarter, when the Jets still were within striking distance, Fields fumbled a snap away.
He is not the answer, not now, certainly not in 2026, and that was even clearer any time the Jets watched Maye dipping and dodging pass rushers, taking shots downfield and making everything look easy.
The Patriots made a rebuild look easy — it helps to have the quarterback.
There are seven games left in the season, and everything for the Jets looks difficult.