J-E-T-S Jets Jets Jets

                                           **********

                                     

J-E-T-S! JETS! JETS! JETS! ✈️

The greatest chant in sports. #JetUp pic.twitter.com/s1GyaAQsl0

— New York Jets (@nyjets) September 9, 2024

                                          **********

Men who go to strip clubs for lap dances and people who root for the NY Jets have something in common. They are willing to invest their time and money in being teased. If you are in search of a sure thing, the Jets are not the team for you. Their roommates the Giants would perhaps be more to your liking. Jets fans have been the recipient of precisely one guarantee that came to fruition. Joe Namath stated that his team would win Super Bowl III and that’s what they proceeded to do. Subsequently the Jets have been perched on the perimeter of greatness on several occasions. Their fan base has been convinced over and over that the drought was at long last ended. It has been a decades long roller coaster ride. The Jets don’t spend much time near the top of the track, nor do they usually dwell at the bottom for lengthy periods. Instead they perform like the tide, approaching and receding, offering up and taking away, excelling only to screw up opportunities ripe for the taking, teasing us like a seasoned pro who knows her away around a lap well enough to bleed our wallets dry.

Okay, enough metaphor torturing. No doubt you’ve grasped the point. But don’t take my word for it, here are some chronologically ordered examples of post Namath’s #1 finger wag meltdowns by the boys in green. The 1982 Mud Bowl. They’ve made it all the way to the AFC Championship game. Behind the immaculate running of the spectacular Freeman McNeil there is simply no stopping us. Only quicksand could stop our offense, but NFL games are never played on quicksand. Well, the Dolphins manage to come up with the next best thing. Even though descendants of Noah quickly get to work on Ark II as a deluge of rain hits Miami, somehow the Dolphins conveniently neglect to cover the field. With McNeil unable to get his footing in the slop, the Jets must turn to an aerial assault. FIVE Richard Todd interceptions later, no less than THREE of them inexplicably grabbed by LINEBACKER A.J. Duhe who must have given Todd one of his kidneys prior to the game, and the dream is over.

In 1986 a personal foul penalty against Mark “the genius” Gastineau directly results in an overtime loss in the 2nd round of the playoffs to the Cleveland Browns. In 1993 the Jets needed to win just one of their last three games to qualify for the postseason behind the quarterback play of Boomer Esiason. If you’re thinking that they went 0-3 in that span I do believe you’re recognizing a trend here. In 1994 it was once again the Dolphins who did us in as the Jets allowed a 10-point 4th quarter lead to evaporate in a game punctuated by Dan Marino’s infamous “fake spike play”. In 1998 a 10-point halftime lead in the AFC Championship game is not enough for a Bill Parcells coached Jets team to hold against the eventual Super Bowl winning Denver Broncos. Still, getting so close to the Promised Land gives Jets Nation extremely high hopes for the 1999 season. The bubble is burst along with Vinnie Testadverde’s ruptured Achilles tendon in the first half of the first game, effectively ending the season and the Jets chances of becoming the third team to be led into the Super Bowl by Tuna. The 2000 season gave Jets fans the wonderful memory of the Monday Night Miracle game, but that Al Groh coached team which started out an impressive 6 -1 and had their destiny in their hands at 9 – 4 missed the playoffs by going 3–6 over the last 9 games of the season. I’m sure we all remember why Al Groh was coaching the Jets in the first place, how wrong the guy he replaced did us, and how well that guy ended up doing in New England after going Benedict Arnold on us. In 2004 the Jets completely outplayed the Pittsburgh Steelers in the divisional round of the playoffs, but victory was denied them when Doug Brien suddenly forgot that a critical part of his job security was the ability to kick field goals. Jets fans are then given an unexpected treat, the splendor of Brett Favre changing shades of green, a real live legend recruited on a short term basis to provide the arm strength lacked by Chad Pennington. Things looked pretty good after starting 8 – 3. Then comes yet another epic collapse and not only do the Jets fail to make the postseason, but the AFC East is won by none other than the Pennington led Miami Dolphins. Sounds like a joke, right? Nope, just another season for the “Same Old” New York Jets.

Other teams have eras of consistent greatness and periods of being steadily awful. Top franchises have many more good seasons than bad while inept ones have far more that are cringe inducing than are marked by superior quality. Game in and game out, season in and season out, even decade in and decade out, fans of those franchises know what to basically expect. If you’re a Steelers fan for example, you probably won’t spend a substantial portion of your life cycle in between championships. Same thing for Giants fans. On the other end of the spectrum, fans of teams such as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers routinely did not secure extra mortgages on their homes to purchase tickets for the Super Bowl because they expected their team to be playing in it. The Bucs were as bad as advertised year after year after year until they finally screamed "enough is enough", grabbed the legendary Tom Brady who was eager to prove that he could lead a team to Super Bowl glory without Bill Belichick, and he proceeded to do just that. There is a certain comfort in predictability. But the New York Jets rarely provide their fans with such comfort. When you expect them to be terrible, they often turn out to be pretty good, and just when you get used to it and perhaps even dare to gloat about their promising prospects, the clock strikes midnight and they are once again transformed into the Keystone Cops.

2009 played out true to form, a microcosm of the team’s history. After three games, all wins, Rex Ryan was declared savior and Mark Sanchez the Messiah. After the next three games, all losses, visions of the days of Rich Kotite danced demonically in our heads. It became perfectly clear that the rest of the season would turn out either really really bad, or really really good. Spoiler alert - it did not turn out really really good.

I won't get into details of the years 2010 - 2024 because they are nothing to write home about. In a nutshell, hopes and expectations were raised only to then be cruelly dashed. Rinse and repeat. I did not know when I wrote this post in 2009 that the Jets would make the playoffs in 2010 and then...fast forward to the start of the 2024 season and they haven't been back since. In that stretch some exceptionally talented players have come to play for the Jets, only for a lot of exceptional talent to be wasted. The only thing certain is that nothing is certain, there is no accurate crystal ball for Jets fans. Expectations serve as devices of torture for us. “Same Old Jets” is the most ironic expression in all of sports because nothing remains the same for them except for the fact that they keep changing from season to season, game to game, quarter to quarter, possession to possession. The fan base is perpetually on the edge of their seats, at the ready to either cheer in triumph or curse in disgust. Only another clichéd sports expression keeps us from the abyss of insanity at the end of yet another promising but ultimately heartbreaking season. Just wait till next year.

  

     

   

    

Favre is back - Palin won't leave

Back on 9/29/08 I wrote the following piece on this blog. At the time I was close to being equally wired about what was going on in the worlds of sports and politics. In the former, my beloved Jets had just enjoyed a history making victory over Arizona Cardinals with then quarterback Brett Favre throwing six touchdowns. Ironically it was the Jets who would fall apart after a 8 – 3 start and end up missing the playoffs while the Cardinals found themselves in the Super Bowl with a fourth quarter lead before eventually going down. None of this was foreseeable as I sat down to write last September. When it came to football, all was right with the world. Brett Favre seemed poised to deliver precisely what Jets Nation desperately hoped for, a return to respectability and perhaps dare we even think it, to greatness. Super Bowl III happened a long long long time ago. Could it be that the hired gun / NFL legend we convinced to change the shades of green on his uniform would turn back the clock and pull off the improbable if not downright impossible? Apparently not. Brett’s throwing arm betrayed him (specifically the bicep) and then he betrayed the Jets by retiring when I suspect he knew all along that he longed to still play. Perhaps betrayal is the wrong word though, for I also suspect that both parties knew all along he would be a 1-year rental. Even had the Jets won the Super Bowl with Favre I still wouldn’t be shocked if he subsequently retired only to unretire and join the Minnesota Vikings. Winning a Super Bowl with the Jets would not have been sufficient vengeance against the Green Bay Packers. Only winning as the shining star of their arch enemy Minnesota Vikings would accomplish that. If Favre cared only about continuing to play in the NFL and not so much about spite, he’d still be playing for the Jets. The Packers pissed him off by setting up provisions in his trade to the Jets that made it impractical for New York to turn around and trade him to Minnesota where he wanted to be all along. Green Bay made it inevitable that his attempt at revenge would have to wait at least one year. That year has come and gone as quickly as they all do. Brett’s a Viking now, about to start at QB in their second preseason game. The Jets did their part (preplanned?) to move his plan along by relinquishing their rights to him after trading up in the draft to obtain Mark Sanchez as their quarterback of the future. If anyone seems destined to be the reincarnation of the hope and success Joe Namath brought to the franchise way back when, Sanchez appears to be that guy. As for Brett Favre, he is simply following up on what he has wanted to do since the day Green Bay told him that Aaron Rodgers was the guy they planned to go forward with. His desire for payback and to scream out “I TOLD YOU SO” is the worst kept secret in the NFL. He played amazingly in his final season as a member of the Packers and had the Jets poised on the brink of greatness after 11 games last season. So I don’t doubt what he's capable of and wish him well on his quest, somewhat juvenile though it may be. He wants to play and the Vikings want him to play for them, so nobody has been harmed by his annual pre-season song and dance other than Green Bay fans who can only see him from the perspective of a devoted cheesehead, which is also understandable. The chips will fall where they may as they always do. When the Jets landed Favre last year it seemed almost too good to be true, and in the end that’s pretty much what it was. Like their 8 – 3 start, Favre’s tenure with the team was basically a mirage. The present and future in Jetsville belong to Mark Sanchez and company. As usual, the goal for the upcoming season is greatness or bust.

I don’t have nearly as much to say in follow-up to the second half of my 9/29/08 posting where I discussed Sarah Palin and her then upcoming debate against Joe Biden. Whereas Super Bowl winners only get bragging rights for one year, winners of presidential elections have them for no less than four years. Team Obama-Biden won in a rout and now have their hands full presiding over a nation. If any man is up to that task it is Barack Obama, or at least that’s what I hope for a variety of reasons. Former President Bush and former presidential candidate John McCain have been respectful of the current administration primarily through silence, leaving the noise making to former Vice President Dick Cheney and former VP hopeful, Sarah Palin. Cheney has picked on his old boss nearly as much as he’s complained about President Obama, but Palin is only looking forward to four years from now so doesn’t bother criticizing McCain or Bush or anyone else from the past. This isn’t to say that she hasn’t been looking at the past, particularly Obama’s, choosing to align herself with silly conservatives (aka birthers) who question the President’s U.S. citizenship. Her other post election day accomplishment of note is quitting her job as governor of Alaska, apparently to spend more time on Facebook and Twitter. Guess she figures that the internet worked wonders for Obama’s presidential bid, so why not for her own future one. As they frequently say on Twitter – SMH – an acronym I once had to look up to learn that it means “Shaking My head”.

By Roy L. Pickering Jr. (author of Patches of Grey)