Much like Christopher Meloni or Jason Statham, Jets fans have made a wonderful living playing the same character for decades. Their franchise’s lack of relative success and semiregular occurrence of some strange outlier event (take your pick, as I’ve skipped Thanksgiving to watch a butt fumble, called the home phone of a strength coach who tripped an opposing player and watched my innocent mensch of a sports editor read about a coach’s bedroom preferences on the internet) has afforded them the performative space to call up talk radio stations and flood social media with their musings on how collectively aggrieved they’ve been.
Most of the time, it’s borderline charming. There is something romantic about the idea of loving something that never quite manages to return your affection. But in the case of Jets fans, especially on a day that they’ve acquired Aaron Rodgers in one of the most monumental moments in franchise history, it’s also completely misguided and delusional.
Sure, the Jets’ fan base has not won a Super Bowl since Joe Namath was under center, but that doesn’t mean they have not been catered to like an emotionally short-circuited teenager over the past 20 years in a desperate attempt to earn their affection.
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Admittedly, I feel the boomer slowly crawling out of me like the chestburster in Alien, but it’s high time I embrace it. Today of all days, it’s time to end the act. They’ve had it pretty damn good. I don’t want to hear any more complaining.
It’s fair to argue that the Jets have had the most exciting coach (Rex Ryan) in the NFL over the past two decades. Their owner, Woody Johnson, boarded a plane in the middle of a work week to beg Darrelle Revis not to hold out before the season opener. Imagine having billions of dollars and allowing someone who isn’t a king or world leader to redirect your time and energy, and he did it willingly (when I make my first billion, just try to interrupt the planning of a spur-of-the-moment trip to the Maldives, I dare you). They signed some of the best and biggest-named free agents in the NFL over that time period—Santonio Holmes, Plaxico Burress, Le’Veon Bell, Bart Scott, LaDainian Tomlinson, Brandon Marshall. They traded for Brett Favre.
Each and every time there was a head coach opening, they went out and got the hottest assistant, one of the biggest names on the market. At the time of Todd Bowles’s hiring (2015), the Cardinals and the Bruce Arians tree were being intellectually pilfered. Before Jets fans allowed their own twisted martyrdom to bend the narrative on Adam Gase (hired in ’19), he was a good coach with options (and, I would still argue, would have been a fine head coach had his roster not been torpedoed).
So what if none of it has worked out? Would you rather be a Lions fan? Try throwing on burgundy and yellow on a random Sunday and trudging your way to that stadium in suburban Virginia. See how that feels. Would you rather your football life resemble the pace and excitement level of Lincoln?
The signing of Rodgers should put to rest this idea that Jets fans’ pain has been unique or any worse than the bottom third of the NFL since 2000. The Jets have the eighth-worst record of any franchise during that time but have made it to a pair of AFC title games, back to back. The owner hopped on a plane again, this time to convince one of the league’s most empowered and mercurial minds to leave a future of complete freedom and leisure—the room to talk on literally any podcast he wants—to live in northern New Jersey. I’m here right now trying to get to the other side of a two-lane highway via some hellscape of a jug-handle pull-off while getting middle-fingered by speeding truck drivers desperately trying to escape this paved nightmare. I’ll let you know how it goes over the two hours it will take to complete this three-mile journey.
This is a golden moment for the Jets, and if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. That’s how life works. But don’t plaster past failures of the franchise over this decision and act like it was inevitable; like this was bound to happen to your tortured soul as a Jets fan.
The Jets have put together a competent group of coaches and executives to pave the way for this moment. They got you a general manager from the Ravens and Eagles tree, unquestionably the most studied front offices in the NFL. They got you a coach from the Kyle Shanahan tree, which is harder to get right now than a pair of Nike Vapor Flys.
Now, you have Rodgers, one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history. As has really been true for the past couple of decades or so, it could absolutely be worse.
