When things get ugly, so does the locker room. That hasn't officially been the case for the New York Jets, but there have been some instances that haven't exactly been promising.
As the Jets move forward and try to win games at the level they need to if they want to turn their season around, blaming one another won't solve anything.
That starts at the top. Aaron Rodgers can't come out after playing as poorly as he has and say something about Mike Williams running the wrong route. He severely underthrew that pass, too, so he needs to take some blame for it as well.
There have been other instances, something to keep an eye on moving forward.
However, interim head coach Jeff Ulbrich wants to put a stop to that now.
He addressed the finger-pointing going on, highlighting what New York needs to do for that to stop.
“Like a lot of teams around this league, just in current American sports, when adversity hits, you see a lot of teams that splinter, start pointing the finger,” Ulbrich said, according to SNY. “Things start to go bad not just on the field but off the field. I have not felt that at all with this team. As adversity has hit, we have started to really start to respond in the right way – as opposed to pointing the finger, pointing the finger at ourselves. Every man in that locker room and every coach on this coaching staff is doing that right now. What can we all do collectively to get better and win some games around here?”
The issue with finger-pointing for the Jets is that 90% of their team hasn't played up to expectations. We could go down a long list, from Rodgers to Williams to Breece Hall to Tyron Smith and many others, New York simply isn't playing good football.
A lack of accountability doesn't do anyone in the locker room any good and, oftentimes, makes things much worse.
These are professionals, some among the elite. Many of them need to look in the mirror and recognize that if they were playing better individually, perhaps this team wouldn't be in the position it is.
The Jets season isn't over, but if they don't change their attitude, they could kiss it goodbye.
Turning things around starts this Sunday in a Week 8 contest against a New England Patriots squad that shouldn't be on the same field as them.
