NFL Friday Futures: New York Jets 2023 Win Total

The New York Jets are a sexy pick to win the Super Bowl this year. They are a sexy pick to win the AFC East and make the playoffs. They are a team with a lot of hype and buzz around them after adding Aaron Rodgers in the offseason. They are also a team that was very lucky to stay healthy on the defensive side last year and have one of the six toughest schedules in the NFL for 2023. The over 9.5 wins has been bet up to no less than -118 and as high as -145 at our partner sportsbooks.

This raises the question of whether this is still a good bet. And if it’s not a good bet to make, should we be looking at the under? In order to answer that question, we need to do a deep dive into the Jets schedule and see where our hard-earned dollars should go.

New York Jets 2023 Season Win Total

The New York Jets won seven games last season. That means they would need at least a three-game improvement to go over that win total this season. They were 7-4 before a late-season nosedive took them down to that 7-10 finish but made a major upgrade at the quarterback position by bringing in Aaron Rodgers to replace the crew of Joe Flacco, Zach Wilson and Mike White. Wilson ended the season at the bottom of the league for qualifying quarterbacks in just about every statistical category. Rodgers may not be at the peak of his career, but he is still light years better than the production the Jets were able to get out of Wilson and company in 2022. That should be a positive for the win total if you believe that win total was legit … but I do not think last season’s win total was, in fact, legit.

New York Jets 2022 Season Wins

The Jets were very lucky to catch a few teams with backup quarterbacks in their wins last season. They faced Jacoby Brissett in a historic comeback win against the Cleveland Browns that never should have happened. They faced Miami third-string QB Skylar Thompson in their win against the Dolphins. They caught Kenny Pickett in his mid-game debut and almost lost to the rookie in their win against the Steelers. Brett Rypien was the quarterback when they barely edged the Denver Broncos, and Trevor Semien was the QB for the Bears when the teams faced off at MetLife before the Jets sputtered to a 7-10 finish. Of the seven wins the Jets had in 2022, five of them came against below-average backups. When you view their season through that lens, they probably were not as good as that below-average 7-10 record even suggests.

New York Jets 2023 Season Schedule

The Jets are slated for a lot of primetime games this season. They play two Monday Night Football games, two on Sunday night, one on the Friday after Thanksgiving and one on Thursday late in the season. As a Jets fan, I am excited about this. As a gambling man, those are all marquee games that would scare me if I were betting an over.

The AFC East is a tough division — the Jets face the Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins and New England Patriots twice each. They may only be favored in one or two of these games. They open with the Buffalo Bills as 1.5-point underdogs. They follow that up with a visit to Dallas to face the Cowboys. They are unlikely to be favored in that road game as well. Then they catch the Patriots at home, which should be a winnable game. Last year they should have beaten New England but lost both home and away. The Jets then catch a Monday night home game against the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs. They will not be favored in that one either. If they get through that gauntlet at 2-2, it would be considered a positive. They are likely to end up 1-3 or maybe even 0-4, which would be a disaster.

Garrett Wilson New York Jets 2023 NFL Futures

The Jets then travel to Denver for a short week after playing on MNF. A road game on short rest is always a concern, even though this is a winnable game. Then they will come back home for three straight games at MetLife Stadium. The first will be against the defending NFC champion Eagles. This is another game they are unlikely to be favored in. Then they technically play a road game against their fellow stadium mates, the New York Giants. The Giants were a playoff team in 2022, and the stadium will likely be filled with screaming New York fans wearing blue. After that they play the Los Angeles Chargers on Monday Night Football. Through their first eight games, the Jets are home against the Bills, Chiefs, Eagles and Chargers. Home games are great, but those four opponents are all top-tier teams in the NFL. The Jets can play well to start their season and still only have a record of 4-4 or 3-5 heading into Week 10.

If the Jets are going to have a big year, they need to come out of that early-season gauntlet with at least a .500 record. That gives them a chance to go 6-3 over the last nine games in order to top that 10-win mark. They are likely to only be favored in three of those first eight games. Even to get near .500 they will have to outperform expectations.

The back end of the schedule is softer, but still has some potential pitfalls. They face the Raiders in Las Vegas, Buffalo in upstate NY and then come home to get the Dolphins on short rest for a Black Friday showdown. They may be favored in two of those games, but all three are potential losses. Finally starting in Week 13 they get a little relief with back-to-back winnable home games against the lowly Atlanta Falcons and Houston Texans.

The Week 15 game in Miami is likely to be a big one for the Jets’ hopes of making the playoffs and hitting their over. If the Jets can win this one, they could run the table on the last six games of the season and catch this over in dramatic fashion. They also could see injuries derail a promising season, which is what happened to them last season. The final three games are against the Washington Commanders at home, the Cleveland Browns on the road, and a finish to the season by facing the Patriots up in New England.

As you can see, the Jets schedule is one of the toughest in the entire league and it would be even tougher if not for some of those softer matchups toward the end of the season.

New York Jets Win Total Bet

As if the strength of schedule and suspect 2022 record were not enough of a reason to be skeptical, “the Jets over 9.5 wins” has been bet up already. This is no longer a standard juice bet at -110. The best remaining price is -118 to the over at FanDuel Sportsbook. Other books have this in the -130 to -145 range, which is just absurd given the number of games they will actually be favored to win in 2023.

As you can probably guess, my lean here is take the Jets going under 9.5 wins. As a fan of the team, I really want to believe that everything will be great in 2023, but I think the Jets outperformed expectations in 2022. This has led to outsized expectations in 2023 for a team playing in a very competitive division and with cross divisional games against a very good NFC East and AFC West on top of that. As a fan, I hope I am wrong. As a bettor looking objectively, the Jets need things to break their way and to not have any bad luck against some of the inferior opponents they face in order to get to double digit wins. While I hope I am wrong and they have a huge year, the odds are not in their favor. This would be true at even money, but even more so if the best we can get is -118. I hate to say this, but the smart money should be on the Jets to finish with under 10 wins and another year of early tee times when the playoffs start without them.