Sauce Gardner shares biggest 'what if' of his Jets career, and it's not what you would think

"What if" is a phrase New York Jets fans are all too familiar with. What if Vinny Testaverde didn't get hurt in 1999? What if Kenbrell Thompkins caught that ball up in Buffalo? What if the Jets kept Sam Darnold after the 2020 season?

It's a good coping mechanism, I suppose, considering how bad the team has been over the last 15 years in this playoff drought.

Sauce Gardner, who is coming up on a year since he was traded away from the Jets, was asked by Jordan Schultz for his biggest "what if" from his time with the team, and his answer wasn't what everyone expected.

Sauce Gardner's biggest 'what if' as a member of the New York Jets

It wasn't the obvious answer. The answer everyone was expecting him to say was Aaron Rodgers going down four plays into the 2023 season. Monday Night Football against the Buffalo Bills, a summer filled with hype - all gone in a matter of minutes.

The Jets finished 7-10 for the second year in a row, once again held back by a poor offense, wasting a second year in a row of a very good defense.

Sauce's answer was whether they were able to keep the momentum in the 2022 season. That year, the team started 7-4 before the wheels fell off, and they lost six straight games to close out their season.

The first sign of things going badly was when the Jets got to 5-2 with a win over the Denver Broncos, but lost Breece Hall and Alijah Vera-Tucker for the season in the process. This was followed up by a loss to the Patriots, in a game where the Jets were up 10-3 and it appeared like Michael Carter II had a pick-six to put the Jets in front 16-3 with the extra point pending.

The play was called back on a questionable roughing-the-passer call against John Franklin-Myers. The spiral began. Sure, the team would win two more games against the Buffalo Bills and Chicago Bears, but it wasn't enough to keep the season from going off the rails down the stretch.

The horrendous John Franklin-Myers trade

Gardner mentioning the Franklin-Myers trade proves that Gardner is a ball-knower. At the time when the Jets decided to salary dump the former Los Angeles Rams draft pick in a trade with the Denver Broncos, it felt like a poor decision. The Jets were banking on Micheal Clemons to take a big step forward. That was a mistake.

The Jets' defense fell off a cliff in 2024, while Franklin-Myers went on to have two excellent seasons in Denver that led to him signing a three-year, $63 million contract to reunite with Robert Saleh in Tennessee.

The decision to trade Franklin-Myers in favor of acquiring Haason Reddick was one of the final mistakes that Joe Douglas would make as general manager of the team.

Of all the things Gardner could say there with his answer, it was missing the playoffs in 2022 and the Franklin-Myers trade that were the biggest "what ifs" during his tenure with the New York Jets.

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