Jets owner Woody Johnson on meaningless Week 18 win: ‘I don’t care about anything else’

While the New York Jets were victorious in Sunday’s game against the Miami Dolphins, it marked the end of a brutal season. Team owner Woody Johnson, though, had a different spin.

And it’s hard to imagine too many Jets fans liking what Johnson had to say.

Johnson acknowledged that the team failed to meet expectations — citing New York’s six prime-time games.

“Everybody thought this was gonna be unbelievable,” Johnson said. “So from that standpoint, we didn’t live up to that early opinion of virtually everybody.”

If that’s where Johnson left it, this wouldn’t be notable, at all. But of course, Johnson kept going.

Outside of the fact that it could have been the final career in the Hall of Fame career of quarterback, one could easily say that Sunday’s game was meaningless. Just don’t tell that to Johnson.

The owner was immensely proud of his team’s Week 18 win, which gave the Jets a final record of 5-12. Johnson even said, “I don’t care about anything else.”

“We ended up well. Because I don’t care about anything else. But a win at the end was good.”

– Jets owner Woody Johnson after his team’s Week 18 win, moving them to 5-12 on the season.pic.twitter.com/nhTs2XjnQb

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) January 6, 2025

“We ended up well,” Johnson said. “Because I don’t care about anything else, but a win at the end was good. We beat ’em today. They played well. They didn’t give up. Everybody showed up. We did some really nice things. I’m proud of the guys.”

Oh, boy.

At 4-12 heading into Week 18, the Jets had been eliminated from playoff contention for several weeks. Sunday’s game, of course, could have been significant to New York’s opponent. A Miami win coupled with a Denver Broncos loss to the Kansas City Chiefs (in a game that was being played concurrently) would have put the Dolphins in the playoffs. So, the Jets had a chance to play spoiler. And if the Broncos had lost, there would be some merit in praising the team for spoiling the postseason hopes of its rival. But that didn’t happen. In fact, that didn’t come close to happening.

The Chiefs sat nearly every key player for Week 18’s game in Denver. With that, the Broncos wiped the floor with them, winning 38-0. And this wasn’t a game that got out of hand late. It was 14-0 after one quarter, 24-0 at halftime and 31-0 after three quarters. At that point, even CBS stopped pretending it was competitive and sent its entire audience (outside of Denver and Kansas City) to another game. As a reminder, this happened with a full quarter to play.

So, while Sunday’s game between Miami and New York might have started with stakes, those quickly evaporated. These are the kind of games that teams and their fans might struggle to remember who won by the time next season gets going. And if anyone should know that, it would be Johnson, whose Jets have now missed the playoffs in 14 straight seasons. Not only is that the longest active postseason drought in the NFL, it’s the longest active postseason drought in any of the four major North American sports leagues.

A team’s owner putting that much into a meaningless Week 18 win may not be the message anyone wants to hear. That includes fans, players, as well as perspective incoming coaches and general managers. Then again, given the rest of what they’re hearing, this may not be surprising.