Will Jets’ confident words come back to bite them? Robert Saleh says no

The Jets believe they have a real chance to be a special team this year. That has been evident since Aaron Rodgers arrived via trade in April. It was a common thread throughout the team’s run on “Hard Knocks.”

And it continued Monday, when cornerback D.J. Reed said the defense has the potential to be remembered as an all-time great defense, evoking the 1985 Chicago Bears and 2013 Seattle Seahawks.

The Jets have drawn some public heat for their supreme self-belief. And considering they haven’t accomplished anything yet, and still have the longest active playoff drought in the NFL at 12 seasons, there will be much more criticism if they don’t play well early in the season.

But Jets coach Robert Saleh said he’s not worried about the team painting a bullseye on its own back heading into their Week 1 matchup with the Bills.

“No,” Saleh said before Thursday’s first practice of the regular season. “I do think we have a paraphrase problem with the way that our guys talk. I think when you look at D.J.’s quote, he answered the question just like every team in football and every player in football would talk about what they think they can be. But I think what was omitted — and what’s been omitted from all of our guys’ conversations — is how important the moment is and bringing it back [to that].

“Yes … every team has potential to be special this year, all 32 of them. But I think what’s important is listening to the whole quote, listening to our players, knowing our players, and knowing that they’re so focused on the moment and trying to get better every single day. And they talk about that now. Unfortunately, that’s the part that gets omitted in our paraphrase generation. But with that said, I love the mindset of this group on the whole.”

OK, first of all, we posted the whole quote here so that you can see everything Saleh said. We also posted the full context of D.J. Reed’s quote on Monday, in case you were wondering.

So what follows…