When the Jets took off with a torrid start to the pro football season, I told my friends "Wait until they go 8-3, then Ill get interested." After years of watching the Jets, I knew that to make the playoffs, they didnt just need a good shot, they needed to be a shoe-in. They needed a lay-up. They needed to have the bases loaded with nobody out and the top of the order up. They needed pocket aces against 7-2 offsuit.
Despite years of brutal losses at the end of the season and in the playoffs, I actually thought the team had a decent shot this year. And then, to my utter amazement the Jets actually went went 8-3. Im not sure how much 8-3 means to people who dont follow football. While its not my favorite sport, I have been watching it for my entire life, and I know this: 8-3 in a 16 game season means you are in the playoffs. It means you are very likely winning your division. It means, you only have to win 2 of the next five games to be an absolute lock for a playoff spot, and only winning one will still do the job. I dont know what the exact statistical chances of the Jets making the playoffs are after starting 8-3, espcially given their weak opponents in the second half of the season, but browsing some websites it appears all the computer models rated the Jets as the #3 best team in football after week 11 with a projected win-loss record of 12-4.
What is there to say really? What happened, can you even describe it in words? The horror! The horror! To lose four of the next five games and have the entire team and coaching staff meltdown and explode in a ball of fire? How? Why? "No! Its not true! thats impossible [Luke Skywalker voice]!!!" This cant have happened again! Not only did the team miss the playoffs on the last day of the season, they lost in such gut wrenching fashion that ownership saw it fit to fire the 2nd year head coach Eric Mangini the next day. Watching the Jets is really like a recurring nightmare, it just gets more surreal and horrifying with every sleepless moment.
When the Jets lost to Oakland 13-16 in overtime on October 19th, Farve called the game "one of the worst losses of my career." When I heard that comment from the 39 year old NFL Hall of Famer who was traded to the Jets from the Green Bay Packers during the offseason, I had to laugh. All I could think was, Brett, "Welcome to the Jets."
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Bob Herbert's take:
"I don’t talk about it much, but I have been touched by the supernatural. I have personally felt the hot breath of the devil. I am a Jets fan.
If there were a cure, I would take it. I would go to the meetings, do whatever. But there is no cure for a curse, and the New York Jets football franchise is cursed.
Just ask its latest coach, a fine young man named Eric Mangini. Two years ago he was heralded as a genius and favored with a cameo appearance on “The Sopranos.” He spent the second half of this season staring in disbelief as his team collapsed before his eyes for no apparent reason. On Monday he was summarily fired.
Just ask Brett Favre, one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever play the game. The Jets signed him in August, expecting great things, maybe even a championship. By the end of the season Favre, who is 39 and well past his prime, looked like a man in shock. Forget a championship; the team hadn’t even made the playoffs.
You may scoff, but this is not a mere fan’s lament. This is about a Faustian bargain on a football field. Trust me. Demons lurk.
January 12th, eight days before the inauguration of Barack Obama, will be the 40th anniversary of the most glorious day in Jets history. On that date in 1969 a young Joe Namath and his upstart teammates pulled off the greatest upset in pro football history, defeating the mighty Baltimore Colts in the Super Bowl, 16-7.
As an obsessive and peculiarly sensitive fan, I knew during the course of that season that something odd was happening. A sense of unreality accompanied the Jets’ march toward glory. Unseen forces were tipping footballs this way and that. Fortuitous gusts of wind would erupt inexplicably on the calmest of Sunday afternoons.
What I didn’t know was that an adjustment had been made to the ordinary course of existence. A shift had taken place. Namath and his coach, the wily, grandfatherly Weeb Ewbank, had made a pact with the devil.
This is fairly widely known now. I bring it up for the following reasons: Because the anniversary is approaching and events this season so clearly showed that the unspeakable terms of the agreement remain rigidly in force; and because young Jets fans may not understand the source of their inevitable and unending pain.
How long has it been since the Jets went to the Super Bowl? Lyndon Johnson was president. Jacqueline Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis were newlyweds. Barack Obama was just 7 years old. And Favre hadn’t even been born.
The first public hint that Namath and Ewbank had sold the soul of the franchise came at a Miami awards banquet, a few days before the Super Bowl, when Namath famously guaranteed a victory. But a Namath biographer, Mark Kriegel, tells us of a conversation that Joe had with a Long Island bartender named Tank Passuello before the team headed to Miami for the game.
Passuello told Namath that the Colts were roughly seven-to-one favorites. Namath told Passuello to “bet the ranch” on the Jets.
Passuello asked if he was sure.
“Positive,” said Namath.
The game was one of the most famous in all of sports, and there is an iconic video image of Namath leaving the field at the Orange Bowl, his right arm raised and his index finger pointed skyward, as in, “We’re number one!”
But I saw another sight that most fans missed. Ewbank’s normally mild face was wild with demonic glee. He cackled like a madman. The devil had come through. The Jets had won the Super Bowl.
The payback — unrelieved futility — would last an eternity.
The Jets have had 13 coaches since Ewbank, including his unfortunately named son-in-law, Charley Winner. When Lou Holtz took over as coach in 1976, he seemed to know that weirdness was in the air. He made no grand pronouncements, promising fans only that the team would “move the ball.” He then hedged even that modest bet by adding, “I just hope to God it’s forward.”
Holtz fled before the season ended, shrieking hysterically as he left town that “God did not put Lou Holtz on this earth to coach pro football.”
The devil could be heard roaring with laughter.
The great Bill Belichick was hired as head coach in January 2000, but he got wind of the curse and resigned after just one day.
The Jets have brief periods when they do well, but that only serves to make it more delightful for the devil when the raised hopes are dashed.
Hopes are rising again as the franchise searches for yet another coach. Can’t you hear the laughter?
There is no cure."
Its also tough when my two favorite players in the NFL delivered the final nail in the coffin. Ex-Jet quarterback Chad Pennington, and professed pot professor Ricky Williams, who left his highly lucrative NFL career for a couple years to travel the world and get high as often as he pleased.
I dont want to say I was rooting for Miami on Sunday, but I wasnt unhappy when they won. As a Jets fan, I knew what the outcome would be. I had seen the last 4 games. The writing was on the wall. It was a truly fitting end, as the Dolphins are the Jets rivals, and it completely vindicated my long held opinion that Chad Pennington should have stayed in NY. I hope Miami wins the Super Bowl, Pennington wins MVP and Ricky Williams makes the front of the Wheeties box.
i agree your idea ! very nice blog
Although from different places, but this perception is consistent, which is relatively rare point!
Hahaha Go Big Blue.
At least you are a Yankees fan which should balance out your sports karma.
It seems different countries, different cultures, we really can decide things in the same understanding of the difference!
PE Net
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