It was a bad season of football in the Big Apple, but among teams who finished in the bottom 12, the Jets do have the distinction of being the biggest overachiever this season.
| Rank | Team | nERD | Rec. | Super Bowl Odds | Off. NEP Rank | Def. NEP Rank | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 32 | Indianapolis Colts | -10.55 | 4-12 | 0.0% | 23 | 32 | 0 |
| 31 | Miami Dolphins | -8.88 | 6-10 | 0.0% | 32 | 22 | -1 |
| 30 | Cleveland Browns | -8.51 | 0-16 | 0.0% | 28 | 28 | +1 |
| 29 | Buffalo Bills | -5.83 | 9-7 | 0.30% | 29 | 17 | -1 |
| 28 | New York Giants | -5.05 | 3-13 | 0.0% | 26 | 18 | -1 |
| 27 | Oakland Raiders | -4.95 | 6-10 | 0.0% | 18 | 30 | -3 |
| 26 | San Francisco 49ers | -4.89 | 6-10 | 0.0% | 17 | 31 | +3 |
| 25 | Houston Texans | -4.67 | 4-12 | 0.0% | 19 | 26 | -3 |
| 24 | New York Jets | -4.5 | 5-11 | 0.0% | 25 | 20 | +1 |
| 23 | Cincinnati Bengals | -4.2 | 7-9 | 0.0% | 24 | 19 | +3 |
Granted, Gang Green only moved up five spots from their preseason ranking of 29th, but the squad gave a performance that was a far cry from expectations. Before the season, there was talk of New York going 0-16. But Josh McCown ended up leading a functional passing game, and the Jets turned out not to be terrible on defense.
Things ended up going a lot worse for the Giants. We were not as high on them before the year relative to their 11-5 finish in 2016, which was propped up by an 8-3 record in one-score games. As expected, their record in such games regressed to 1-4 this season, but they also vastly underperformed on defense.
We had them projected to finish third in terms of schedule-adjusted Defensive Net Expected Points, but they instead are 18th. Injuries certainly played a role, as four defensive starters from Week 1 went on injured reserve, as did some bad bounces -- the Giants only recovered a third of their opponents' fumbles, while we would generally expect a team to recover half of them.
Still, luck does not tell the whole story, as the Giants still got 15 games from Landon Collins and 9 from Janoris Jenkins, who both played key roles for the 2016 unit. Starters Jason Pierre-Paul, Darian Thompson and Dalvin Tomlinson all made 16 starts, and linemen Damon Harrison and Olivier Vernon made 15 and 12 starts, respectively. Overall, the defense's opening night starters made a combined 139 appearances out of a possible 176, so poor health isn't the sole reason the unit allowed 5.7 yards per play.
The Giants' offense was hit harder by injuries (122 appearances for the unit's Week 1 starters), but its performance was actually not much worse than what we expected before the season, as we projected it to finish just 24th in NEP.