Sauce Gardner refuses to accept the false narrative about his 2024 season

Sauce Gardner is coming off what was, by his standards, a down year. Statistically, 2024 was absolutely the worst season of his NFL career. He didn’t make first-team All-Pro for the first time, his Pro Football Focus grades dipped across the board, and he struggled with penalties and missed tackles early in the year.

Still, Gardner believes the criticism has gone a bit too far.

In an interview with ESPN’s Rich Cimini, Gardner called his 2024 campaign a “pretty smooth” season and said, “It’s never as bad as people try to paint it to be,” pointing to social media as a driving force behind the negativity.

And while he wouldn't be wrong to admit it wasn’t his best season, he’s also not wrong in saying a false narrative has been created. Gardner was still one of the best cornerbacks in the NFL in 2024.

When the standard is being the best player at your position for two straight years, any regression, even slight, is going to be magnified. But that doesn’t mean the criticism has been completely fair or accurate.

Sauce Gardner is still an elite CB and the Jets know it

By the numbers, there’s no question 2024 was Gardner’s worst NFL season. His PFF overall grade dropped to 70.2, down from 87.9 and 88.6 in his first two years.

His coverage grade fell to 73.1, by far the lowest of his career. He missed a career-worst 17.5% of his tackles, and his 10 penalties matched his combined total from 2022 and 2023.

He also failed to earn All-Pro honors for the first time in his career, ending a historic run that saw him become just the third defensive player in NFL history, joining Lawrence Taylor and Micah Parsons, to be named first-team All-Pro in each of his first two seasons.

That’s the bad. But the good? It was still a better season than most cornerbacks in the league could even dream of.

Gardner allowed just 25 receptions in 2024, the fewest by any cornerback in football. He once again gave up only one touchdown, the same as each of his first two seasons.

And while the missed tackles were an issue, he cleaned things up dramatically down the stretch, missing just four tackles over the final nine games. He also allowed fewer than 400 yards in coverage for the third straight season, something that even an elite corner like Patrick Surtain II hasn't done.

In fact, Surtain, widely regarded as arguably the best cornerback in the NFL, was named Defensive Player of the Year in 2024, just one season removed from allowing 701 yards in coverage in 2023.

Gardner has never allowed more than 391 in a single season. Yet, the backlash Surtain received was minimal. When Gardner slips even slightly, the criticism is as loud as for any player in the league.

That’s the core idea that Gardner is pushing back against. The numbers don’t lie — 2024 was far from his best season. But it also wasn’t close to bad. It just wasn’t historic, and when you’ve set the bar as high as Gardner has, the expectations are essentially impossible to meet.

Despite his down year, the Jets don't seem to be perturbed about committing to Gardner long-term. Reports suggest the team could be just days away from signing Gardner to a new contract that would make him the highest-paid cornerback in NFL history.

If the organization had any doubts about his performance, they wouldn’t be backing up the Brinks truck before training camp.

So while Gardner’s 2024 season didn’t meet the impossibly high standard he set, the idea that he was anything but elite never held much weight, and he knows it.

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