Are we going to spend the entire off-season trading in these "leadership, chemistry, identity" vague and intangible sports myths? We just went through a 16 game seasons worth of results where the Patriots had a greater points differential than their opponents, greater yardage differential than their opponents and better overall record than the Jets did.
All games are subject to outliers and unexpected results. The smaller sample size of data the greater likelihood that it can be anomolous. I mean, what is the probability that a team could play 2 games against 2 different opponents in 2 weeks and have both teams go 0 for 5 in FG attempts? It's extraordinarily unlikely. Than you factor that the results of those two games is victories by a combined number of points less than the sum total if those 5 FG's had been made.
That's just the playoffs. In a one game elimination format luck will factor in at some point. Sometimes it's not hugely significant, sometimes it's enormously so. I know that it's common to try to identify that with some sort of "quality", but that is pretty unproven and unfounded.
The Jets have spent the last few seasons building a win now team. They've spent heavily in Free Agency, they've traded picks to move up or acquire veterans, they've opened a window to try to win it all. And with that, 2 years in a row they've now been a game over .500 and have narrowly won 2 playoff games w/ bounces attached. Let's not make more of it than that.