I don't want to hear any negativity right now. I'll save the Joe Beningo syndrome for after we lose, whether it's tomorrow or two weeks from now.
Well he hits the nail on the head. Add another onto the broken bandwagon. Unfortunately, a loss here sets up for an EPIC fail.
I don't agree that the Jets are setting their fans up for failure this year. Let's face it - the Jets are playing with house money already and the playoffs haven't even started yet. Did anyone expect this team to have a win and in game 5 weeks ago? Does anyone really expect this team to win three or even two or let alone one game on the road in the playoffs? If the Jets win tomorrow, the season is a success. If they go on and beat Cincy the following week, the season is a tremendous success. If anyone expects a win at Indy or SD the following week, they are being delusional. This is not a season for disappointment. The only disappointment will be if the Jets lose tomorrow to the Bengals' scrubs. If the Bengals play to win, it will a tough low scoring game considering both teams' style of play and the weather. Does any one really expect the Jets to coast against the Bengals playing at full strength??? A playoff appearance with a rookie QB and coach after the horrible mid season this team had would be a pleasant surprise, but should not raise any Super Bowl expectations in Jets fans. Let's enjoy tomorrow and let the chips fall where they may. I'm just happy to be going to a game that matters tomorrow with a QB that cares about the franchise, his teammates, and who will be here next year and for years to come. And we have a coach that is confident in his team unlike last year when Mangini coached so conservative and without confidence that he made Edwards seem like a decisive risk taker. What a difference from last year when we knew the QB could not care less and the coach was afraid to lose. Last year I was ambivalent going into the Miami game. This year I am excited.
There is no epic fail. This season has already been rescued from the doldrums. This is not the 1998 or the 2002 or 2004 Jets. This is a team that NOBODY expected to be here before the season started and NOBODY expected to be here 5 weeks ago, yet here they are playing a win and in game. If they lose, so what?? I think this team if pointed in the right direction and will be better next year regardless of what happens the rest of the way. That is more than I can say after last year's debacle.
I don't think this was a particularly well-written piece and it sounded just like all the other SOJ pieces I've read. You'd think the Jets were the only team to ever lose a game.
You summed it up for me pretty well. Unlike most, I thought the team did well against the Colts last week. And unlike two weeks ago, I feel this team deserves to get a playoff spot... if they beat Cincy of course. If this team could just figure out how to not shoot themselves in the foot...
Here is the column he Miracle That Never Happens * Sign in to Recommend * Twitter * comments (186) * Sign In to E-Mail * Print * ShareClose o Linkedin o Digg o Facebook o Mixx o MySpace o Yahoo! Buzz o Permalink o By BOB HERBERT Published: January 1, 2010 Here we go again, said the Jets fan. Skip to next paragraph Bob Herbert Go to Columnist Page ? Readers' Comments Readers shared their thoughts on this article. * Read All Comments (186) ? That would be me. I?ve been fortunate enough to avoid drug addiction and alcoholism, and I gave up smoking cigarettes a very long time ago. But I am a Jets fan. And being a New York Jets football fan is an illness. So keep that in mind, and please be kind as you read this. There was a single moment of glory on Jan. 12, 1969, when the great Joe Namath, with his white shoes and long hair and a right arm that could write poetry with a football, led the Jets to the greatest upset in pro football history: defeating the mighty Colts of Baltimore in the Super Bowl, 16-7. Google it. You?ll see. I was young and thought that was the start of something big. Once you take that first hit of a powerful drug, you think that exalted, blissful feeling can be repeated. You can spend the rest of your life trying to experience it again. I should have known the following December that something freakish was afoot. All the Jets had to do was win one more game ? just defeat the Kansas City Chiefs ? to go back to the Super Bowl. Behind 6-3 in the fourth quarter, the defending world champions had a first down on the Chiefs? 1-yard line. The 1-yard line! It was cold. The wind was blowing. And the beginning of decades of unimaginable, humiliating futility for Jets fans was upon us. The Jets could not advance the ball that 1 yard. They tried and tried and tried again. It never happened. They got within a foot of the goal line, but they couldn?t cross it. They lost, and the Chiefs went to the Super Bowl. There is something otherworldly about the perennial ineptitude of this franchise. Gerald Eskenazi, a former sportswriter for The Times, called his history of the team ?Gang Green: An Irreverent Look Behind the Scenes at Thirty-Eight (Well, Thirty-Seven) Seasons of New York Jets Futility.? That was in 1998, and nothing has changed since then. I bring this up because now, more than four, long decades after their one brief moment in the sun, Jets fans are setting themselves up for yet another brutal disappointment. A couple of weeks ago, the coach, Rex Ryan, mistakenly thought that his team, playing terribly, had blown any chance to make the playoffs. It turned out that he was wrong. Then the Jets went on to beat the undefeated Indianapolis Colts, and if they beat the Cincinnati Bengals in a nationally televised game on Sunday night they will enter the postseason countdown to the Super Bowl. And that?s the specialty of this team. It?s not just that it?s been bad for most of the past half-century. The insidious aspect is that time and again the Jets rise from the ashes of their awfulness, just enough to offer the hope that something wonderful is about to happen. And the fans get all pumped and crazy, and then the roof caves in. We should know better, but we can?t help ourselves. There was the time, for example, when my heroes were playing the Dolphins in Miami and the winner of that game would go on to the Super Bowl. The Jets had a good team that year, and I figured they had Miami?s number. But the weather gods opened the skies over South Florida and it rained for days. It poured. The Dolphins refused to protect the field with a tarpaulin. The result was a vast basin of mud that paralyzed the Jets? high-powered offense. Miami won 14-0. Things often happen with the Jets that seem inexplicable. After one of their typically dismal seasons, they fired the coach, Pete Carroll, who had lost his last five games. He was replaced with a coach, Rich Kotite, who had lost his last seven. The owner, the late Leon Hess, said he had made the switch because he wanted to ?win now.? That didn?t happen. Kotite was a spectacularly terrible coach. Jets fans have come to take a certain twisted pride in their team?s horrendous history, competing to see who has the worst and most vivid memories. Years ago, whenever I had trouble sleeping, I?d listen to Joe Benigno, who then was the overnight guy on WFAN sports radio and as big a Jets fan as I am. He?d tell hilarious stories of his extreme anguish over the team?s amazing capacity to find creative ways to lose. The bigger the game, the more innovative the effort. So here we go again. Long-suffering Jets fans will be glued to their televisions on Sunday night, hoping for the win that will shoot their team into the playoffs. So we can begin praying again for the miracle that never happens.
How? By losing to the falcons at home and beating the colts 2d string? Correct. Its the 2009 Jets. A team that has been quite good at times and amazingly inept at other times. A team that should probably be 10-5 but is fighting for a WC bid on the last week of the season. The players, coaches and many fans & so called experts expected the Jets to be a good team this season. If they win today they will move to a 9-7 record which is pretty much what most people expected them to do. They haven't exceeded anyone's expectations. If they finish up a game over .500 or at .500 - that is what we all thought they would do at the beginning of the season - be a mediocre team. How can you possibly call yourself a Jets fan and ask such a ridiculous question? If they lose they will have crushed our playoff dreams yet again and done so in pitiful fashion in the last game of the season on national TV in the last game ever in Jets Stadium. if they lose So what???????????????? Please turn in your Jets Nation Membership card. Surrender your Jets Keychain and stop referencing Joe Willie - You sir are no Joe Willie Namath. You have lost your way. The only thing you can do to restore your balls and your brain is wake up and realize that it is all about WINNING THIS FOOTBALL GAME. THIS IS IT !!!!! THIS IS IT FOR ALL JETS FANS AND PLAYERS - PAST PRESENT OR FUTURE WE NEED TO WIN THIS FOOTBALL GAME. FOR BROADWAY JOE. FOR WINSTON HILL. FOR WAHOO. FOR EMERSON BOOZER. FOR JOE FIELDS. FOR MO LEWIS. FOR AL TOON. FOR LEON HESS (R.I.P.) FOR EVERYBODY WHO HAS EVER BLED GREEN & WHITE. WE MUST WIN THIS FREAKING GAME TONIGHT !!!!!! The team is 8-7 hardly pointed in any direction at all. Your defeatist SOJ attitude tells you to already look torwards next season - WAKE UP SOLDIER !!! THIS SEASON IS HERE AND PRIME FOR THE TAKING. THE JETS ARE ON THE VERGE OF THE PLAYOFFS AND A CHANCE TO MAKE A LEGENDARY RUN FOR GLORY. DO NOT WRITE THIS SEASON OFF AND START TALKING ABOUT NEXT SEASON. YOU COULD BE DEAD BEFORE NEXT SEASON STARTS. LIVE FOR TODAY. LIVE FOR THIS SEASON. YOU GOTTA BELIEVE BABY !!! NO EXCUSES, NO NEXT YEARS, NO BEING POINTED IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION - YOU & I BOTH KNOW ITS ALL BS....THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IS WIN TONIGHT !!! WIN TONIGHT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Being a Jets fan Don't know about how you all feel about women posting on this site as it appears to be predominately men but I'm a diehard Jets fan for over 25 years. It started when my father and brother forced me to watch football back in the days when there was only 1 TV in the housre and on SUnday's it was always football. I use to protest every week but never won so I finally decided to learn the game but in protest of having to learn the game and watch football,I defied by father and brothers who were and are diehard Giants fans and decided to root for the Jets. Well it stuck and here I am 25 years later. I even have a child today thanks to the Jets, having met her father at a Jets game!!! Love this team, hate the constant disappointments and hope like hell that tonite is the start of something big!!
^womem are welcome on the site, we have a few other female posters. you get brownie points for blowing off the giants to become a jets fan.
Thanks guys. I've been visiting ganggreen for a long time now and am happy to be an active part of it. I'm going to the game tonite, was able to secure tickets at the local mall last night when I went to see Kris Jenkins and Jim Leonhard who appeared there yesterday!! It was great meeting those guys, what a character Kris Jenkins is!! Secured a pic and some autographs too and am crazed for the game tonite
As I said, I am happy to be going to a game in January that is a win and in game. I want nothing more than for the Jets to win. Now get off your high horse and enjoy the game.
They pulled 5 players. That's hardly the 2nd string. If anything it just shows how terrible their depth is.
