Why Your Team Sucks 2019: New York Jets

Some people are fans of the New York Jets. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the New York Jets. This 2019 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here. Your team: Football Mets. Hey buddy, in New York, it’s JETS FANS who do the groping, thank you very much. Your 2018 record: 4-12, featuring two three-game losing streaks and a six-game losing streak. That’s a lot of Jetsiness to pack into one season, but this franchise rarely, if ever, lets America down when it comes to being terrible in the densest possible concentrations. They got frog-stomped 41-10 by a Bills team quarterbacked by Matt Barkley, which is somehow even more humiliating than losing to Nathan Peterman. They let Fireman Ed, who will almost certainly run for Congress at some point, back onto the premises (imagine how broken your life must be that rooting for the Jets represents a step back toward normalcy). They were in the running for Khalil Mack but the Raiders shipped him to Chicago before New York ever got to make a proper counteroffer. They handed the Browns that franchise’s first win in over a year, but only after going up by two touchdowns. They blew a 16-0 lead to Marcus Mariota and it didn’t even feel like a surprise. Marcus Maye returned a pick 104 yards but didn’t score because he got too tired. Doug Marrone ran up the score on the Jets as revenge for them offering him phantom leverage when he fled Buffalo four years prior. In that same loss to the Jags, the Jets kicked a field goal in the fourth quarter when they were down 25-3. No need to run up the score when the Jets will run their own way down. They got swept by the Patriots, naturally. They lost Bilal Powell to a potential career-ending injury, then re-signed him this offseason anyway. Such a fine line between generousness and foolishness. Speaking of which: they gave Trumaine Johnson $34 million guaranteed and he promptly missed six games. They had three Pro Bowlers and two of them were special teamers. Their only major victories last season came against Matt Patricia and the Lions (beating secondhand Patriots is about the best this organization can hope for) and against class action litigants whose personal seat licenses were rendered worthless, or I guess MORE worthless, by new ticketing policies. They also brought in Terrelle Pryor, who apparently gets alligator arms in practice and when no pass is forthcoming: Pryor is no longer here. I’d say that’s addition by subtraction, but that rule doesn’t apply to the Jets, who themselves would assist the world by disappearing from it altogether. Your coach: Todd Bowles is gone. To replace him, the Jets went ALL OUT. They needed a big name. Someone with cachet. Someone whose face could light up Broadway. Someone, you know, GOOD. They did not find that someone. Instead, they found this man… I spy with my freakshow eyes……… That’s former Dolphins coach and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? villain Adam Gase. ( Now with beard!) The Jets say they weren’t trying to land Jim Harbaugh nor Mike McCarthy. I don’t believe that. The fact that the Jets hired Gase is only proof you need of their poorly-disguised failures. Gase went 23-25 in three years down in Florida, but that was mere prelude to the disaster that awaits him in the Meadowlands. In both skill AND temperament, Gase has a Kotite-like potential I think we all yearn to see fulfilled… Gase wanted to fool the other team but sometimes ended up outsmarting himself. That frustrated some players… One player said if a play-call didn’t work, he sometimes let it carry over for several minutes and was out of sorts emotionally. Oh yeah he’ll do fucking GREAT in New York. Love to have a coach who stews over mistakes like he just shanked an approach at the pitch-and-putt. Imagine having Bill Parcells’s ability to brood like a dick, but not having his charm, nor his talent, nor his resiliency. That’s Adam Gase. He and this franchise were destined for one another, so much so that they let Gase shove out then-general manager Mike Maccagnan and take over as interim personnel honcho before they hired Joe Douglas to take the role on a permanent basis (but NOT before Douglas forced them to double their initial offer to him and not before floating the idea of hiring Peyton Manning for the job, only to have the football world laugh in their faces at the notion). I wouldn’t let the Jets return a pair of socks to Marshalls. Again, the Jets willingly gave absolute power to a moody retread. Maccagnan was a horrible GM—he will forever be the dude who drafted a QB who couldn’t even keep a starting job in the AAF—but it speaks volumes that the only reason the Jets saw fit to dismiss him was because they fell prey to the backchannel scheming of that moody retread. Two otherwise unemployable weirdos just backstabbing the shit out of each other nonstop. We’re not done here. In the interest of maximum conflagration, Gase has assembled a rogues’ gallery of a coaching staff that desperately requires Todd Haley and a third Ryan brother to round it out. First of all, he brought in bounty-happy ’80s action movie villain Gregg Williams to run the defense with his signature blend of idiocy and cheap bravado… “The reason I keep getting hired is culture,” Williams said. “Culture beats strategy any day of the week.” This man is so in-demand. All the time. You hear it. That culture Williams speaks of includes walking up to lone defensive stud and mascot assailant Jamal Adams and saying, “I’ve coached a lot better people than you before.” I can’t even imagine how many times this man has spliced both hardcore porn and the helicopter raid sequence from Apocalypse Now into game tape. The rest of Gase’s staff include failed Bears OC and Patton Oswalt impersonator Dowell Loggains, the immortal Jim Bob Cooter, NASCAR infield denizen Brant Boyer… …guy who grinds against you at Coachella when you didn’t ask him to, Blake Williams… …and Hogwarts caretaker Mack Brown. Take a good look at all of them, because they won’t be around long. Your quarterback: SAMILTON! The question isn’t if the Jets are going to screw up Sam Darnold, it’s how they’ll do it. Bringing him under Gase’s tutelage was a good start putting Darnold on the highway to ruin. I’m always willing to throw rookie QB stats aside. HOWEVER … when your rookie-year QBR is below Nick Mullens, and below a pre-injury Alex Smith, and below Derek Carr as Jon Gruden was actively trying to murder him … that is concerning. These are the Jets, after all. They were born to destroy Sam Darnold. Your new backup is Trevor Siemian. No fanbase is better suited to recycle easy gags about that man’s last name than this one. What’s new that sucks: You’re not gonna believe it, but the Jets drafted a defensive lineman in the first round. Stunning. Every year the Jets try to reboot the Sack Exchange and end up drafting some poor bastard they’ll inevitably end up feuding with, so congrats to Quinnen Williams for when he gets traded to Tennessee for pennies on the dollar three years from now. The big news, of course, is that Le’Veon Bell has arrived. Bell managed to outsmart himself by holding out for a full year in Pittsburgh only to end up with a relatively undervalued deal once he hit the open market: a deal that Gase still found too expensive, to the point where people were openly speculating that the team would trade Bell’s ass before Bell even had a chance to underachieve in a Jets uniform. If it makes Gase feel any better, two women allegedly recouped at least some of that money by robbing Bell after fucking him. Bell’s signature running style, in which he sits cross-legged in the middle of the scrum and plays a round of blackjack before picking a hole, made sense in Pittsburgh because that team has a capable line and an imposing passing attack. The Jets have neither of those things. Excited for him to instantly turn into latter-day Curtis Martin. Just a million armchair coaches going I TOLD YOU THAT YOU CAN’T DANCE AROUND IN THE HOLE as opposing defenses engulf Bell on every snap. What else? Well, they signed C.J. Mosley away from the Ravens. They traded Darron Lee. They gifted Jon Gruden a salary dump by trading for washed-up lineman Kelechi Osemele. They brought in Jamison Crowder, who drops enough passes to invite more pity than scorn. They almost signed Anthony Barr away from the Vikings, only to watch him change his mind after realizing what he was committing to. Another Viking pulled the same bait-and-switch on them. I am a Vikings fan, and I can tell you that it’s not a good sign when MY asshole team represents safe haven to a concerned free agent. HOW YOU FEELIN’ OUT THERE, JETS NATION? That looks about right. In any given year, one of the New York NFL teams shifts into a Knicksian mode where they make splashy moves so that it LOOKS like they want to win now, only everyone knows the end result will be mediocrity at best and a toilet clog at worst. Look at the depth chart and you could talk yourself into this Jets team being competitive. That’s the sales job. It’s repackaged suck. But look! NEW UNIS! Looks like an Andes Mints wrapper. Losing with the Jets means losing in the tackiest manner possible. What has always sucked: There are two types of shitty small businesses in Northern New Jersey. One is run by old-money fuddy duddies and has not changed anything since its hideous patriarch started it several generations ago. That’s the Giants. The other is an adult novelty shop run by men who wear a lot of gold jewelry and yell all the time and are serious-but-incompetent gamblers. That’s the Jets. Spiritually. Their money is older than the Giants’, but their owners and fans are twice as stupid. The Jets are NOO YAWK in the most phony and touristy sense. They’re emblematic of proud bridge-and-tunnel folk who spend every day filling potholes and feel the need to inhabit their stereotypes in full, all the time. MADONE. The Jets are like if someone made a Times Square gift shop a football team. Everything is loud and expensive and annoying and breaks quickly. Nothing about them will ever change, no matter how many QBs they draft high and no matter how many professional mopes they install at head coach. The Jets are a knockoff Rolex. HEY I’M LOSIN’ HERE! What might not suck: I think Quincy Enunwa is healthy this week? HEAR IT FROM JETS FANS! Paul: I want to die every Sunday. Ian: When I heard Gase was the new coach, I immediately facepalmed. This happened while I was driving and I was almost in a head on collision from drifting into the other side of the road. Shaun: I refuse to date fellow fans because I am completely turned off by how shitty we all are. Kyle: The new uniforms look like a design rejected by the University of North Texas. Ethan: A large portion of our mouthbreathing fanbase wanted to hire Mike McCarthy and yet we somehow made an even worse choice for HC. Roy: You could age Tom Brady three times over in FaceApp and the Pats will still kick our asses twice a season. Jon: I know the Jets have Sam Darnold, but I can probably name only three other guys on the roster. I know they’ll go 4-12 this year, wind up with the 4th pick and draft a bust. John: Our owner is the U.S. Ambassador to our closest ally in an era where our relationship with that ally is the most strained it has been in about 204 years. I know there’s a metaphor for the Jets somewhere in there, but thinking about this team in July hurts my soul. The average screen pass goes for 45 yards against this team. John: I have watched essentially every Jets game with my father for the past 25 or so years. Throughout all of that time the least surprised that I have ever seen the man was when Sam Darnold threw a pick-6 on his first ever career passing attempt. Jeremy: I’m a transplanted fan who has spent the last six years living in Jacksonville and then the Detroit area. The Jets are almost never on in either market, so I’ve been forced to watch the Jaguars or the Lions every week. This has been an honest improvement to my Sundays. Fuck Woody Johnson with a steel MAGA hat. Casey: We can either accept Mark fucking Sanchez as our most successful QB in franchise history, or pin all our hopes on a ginger-headed, boring-as-fuck Magary look alike. That shit sucks ass. Eric: You’re our quarterback. Good luck! Phil: This past off-season my team hired a coked-out googley-eyed college frat bro for a head coach and got equally college-ass-lookin’ new jerseys, which can only mean they’re eventually preparing to leave the AFC East for the MAC in search of a league they might actually be able to win. Paul: The only thing worse than being a Jets fan is having to sit there and watch the Patriots win every other Super Bowl for the rest of my life while 47-year-old Tom Brady and his allergen to tomato skin keeps ramming the Jets up the ass for all of eternity. Ian: The only Jets game I’ve ever attended was the 43-23 home loss to Buffalo in 2014 when Geno got pulled for Vick and they dropped to 1-7. The sole highlight of the day was watching, through binoculars, an acquaintance get into an animated argument with his wife several sections over. Kyle: They needed to fire Mike Maccagnan after he proved incapable of finding talent in spite of his scouting background. But when you’re the Jets, even the most obvious decisions must be done in a way to make you look as dumb as possible. All I want is to be able to legitimately look down on the Bills again. Is that so much to ask? Zack: We somehow managed to make the firing of one of the biggest problems in the organization (Mike Macchiato) a gong show. Our organization has all the stability of a drunken, 3-legged corgi without any of the sympathy. Patrick: Our cornerback unit is what other teams have to bring in midseason when all their starting cornerbacks are kidnapped by cartels and held for ransom in a yurt in the Columbian jungle. Also, if I’m hearing this correctly for the tenth straight year, this is the season the Patriots finally struggle, so I guess we’ve got that going for us. I’m so glad our biggest offensive weapons are a guy who had neck surgery, a guy whose best skill is running in a straight line really fast and a guy who hasn’t played football in a year. Exciting times for the Jets. Please just render me unconscious until they discover the rotting, putrid painting of himself Tom Brady keeps in his closet beside his robot jammies and Pupperoni. Rory: The Jets’ greatest consistency lies in its ability to make its own fans miserable. – It has now been literally half a century since the Jets won the Super Bowl, yet they will continue to trot out Joe Namath in a fur coat probably long after he’s dead for ceremonial coin tosses and grainy video montages otherwise starring Weeb Ewbank. – Not only does the team’s entire fanbase suffer from little brother syndrome in our own city, but the big brother in question is the fucking New York Giants. Do you know how pathetic your team has to be for the Giants to be seen as vastly superior and well-run? – The Jets haven’t made the playoffs since 2011. The coach was Rex Ryan, the quarterback was pre-Buttfumble Sanchize and the leading rusher was LaDanian Tomlinson. Enough time has passed that Tomlinson is now in the Hall of Fame. The Patriots have won three more Super Bowls since the Jets were last in the playoffs. – Remember Darrelle Revis? One of the two or three greatest players in franchise history repeatedly clowned the franchise and then won a ring with the Pats before “coming home” and immediately turning to talcum. – Our head coach began his tenure with a press conference in which he constantly looked like even he didn’t understand how he ended up here. – The new uniforms look like cutting-edge shaving cream labels. – The running back situation is so bad that we went out and signed a dude who hasn’t played football in two years after holding his last team hostage. Nothing about this is at all worrisome. – Everyone knows the Jets are the team of New Jersey swamp donkeys and the odd Long Island mob affiliate. Nobody in the city cares about the Jets, at least not openly, lest they bring shame to their families. – Jets fans are in a perpetual state of “hoping for 9-7" because we know second in the division is the best possible outcome. K: I place $100 on the Jets to win the Super Bowl every year. This year I am both confident it won’t end up in my bookies hands and frustrated that the odds aren’t 1,000,000/1 for an astronomical payout. Peggy: I attended a Jets game last year with my husband and 2 friends (none of whom are Jets fans). We drove 14 hours to get to MetLife. It was the Nov. 11 game vs the Bills, a total embarrassment where the final score was 41-10. On the way back to Canada, we crossed the border in Maine and told the guard we had been at a football game. He asked us a few times if we had bought gear at the game and I finally mumbled, “It was the Jets, and they lost pretty bad, so…” He waved us through at that point, because he knew that everything we said was true. Bob: The one single highlight of being a Jets Fan – their Super Bowl win in January of 1969 – I had to miss because I had to go to Donny Bousel’s Bar Mitzvah. I didn’t even see him much after 7th grade. Looking back, who has a Bar Mitzvah Reception on a Sunday? Donny fucking Bousel apparently. Roy: The Jets notified me that the precious mezzanine seats I have been paying off for ten years, (PSL balance $3,492) no longer require a license. But then in the first nice thing they ever did for me, they waived the balance of my PSL, moved me to better field level seats, and upgraded my parking. Then my wife pointed out that my team still sucks. Marty: I went to my first ever NFL game last season. When I saw that the Jets were playing the Browns on Thursday Night Football, I pack up the car with my brother in tow and head up I-71. I thought this was gonna be an easy Jets W. The Jets proceed to knock Tyrod out of the game, allowing the Browns to unleash Baker Mayfield onto the NFL. The Browns come back to earn their first win since December 2016. It is the Browns first prime time win ever since they were brought back. All against the fucking Jets. Fuck Avery Williamson. Fuck Baker Mayfield. Fuck Todd Bowles. Fuck the Johnson family. Sink this franchise into the Hackensack River. Scott: – They paid Le’Veon Bell what he was worth last year – They fired their GM, but only after letting him run another horrible draft – They introduced new uniforms that look like a collaboration of the CFL and AAF’s worst design teams – They drafted their 7th 1st round D-lineman in 10 years Mike: The NFL has been dominated by the passing game for what, two decades at this point? So naturally the Jets make no significant upgrades to their pathetic offensive line to keep their young QB’s collarbone from being ground into powder. Nor do we upgrade at cornerback after our big signing from last year decided to cash in and flame out. Our best receiver is our new running back, who they signed to a four year contract that there is zero chance he plays out. I’ve never lived in New York or Jersey. Hell, I’ve never lived above the Mason-Dixon line. I’m a fucking idiot. Adam: Oddly appropriate pose. Seth: I love my father, he is a great man. That being said, he made me a Jets fan and for that he failed in utterly spectacular fashion. Compounding this was that his season tickets were about 10 rows behind Fireman Ed. Nothing says fond childhood memories like watching drunk people fall over in the parking lot, Fireman Ed screaming obscenities ten rows ahead of you, or asking you dad why everyone keeps yelling at women to take their top off during a late November home game. The cherry on the cake was at my dad’s retirement party where my mom bought him a commemorative Brett Favre plaque and I had to watch the knife dig a little deeper. Fuck the Jets, Fuck the Meadowlands, Fuck me for having the Buttfumble as a calendar alert, and most of all Fuck the Patriots. Christopher: I have suffered through Rich Kotite, 4 wins combined in two seasons, Vinny Testaverde starting at age 41, Keyshawn Johnson, Al Groh, Chad Pennington, Chad Pennington’s shoulder, two missed field goals in the last 5 minutes of a playoff game against the Steelers, Brooks Bollinger vomiting on the sidelines in Denver, wasting the best years of Curtis Martin’s career, Herm “clock management” Edwards, Brett Favre’s dick picks for some reason, Mark Sanchez committing the NFL’s most infamous blunder against the fucking Pats of all teams and on national television to boot, Geno Smith making me long for Mark Sanchez, having to put my hopes in Ryan Fitzpatrick to predictable results, Drafting Tweedle Dee (Bryce Petty) and Tweedle Dum (Christian Hackenberg) in consecutive years in an apparent attempt to hoard guys who are terrible at the game of football, and, in a clear attempt that they weren’t trying to compete, starting Josh McCown. One year the Jets were hosting the Patriots on December 26. For Christmas, I surprised my father (also a Jets fan) with tickets to the game. We sat in the cold of North Jersey in late December watching Tom fucking Brady manhandle the Jets. After three quarters of silent, frozen misery we admitted we should just go home. Merry Christmas, Dad. My wife, who’s not from the States, once asked me genuinely “If the Jets are so bad, why do you like them?” And I had no good answer. I still don’t. Sean: They told the old GM to hit the bricks *after* letting him run free agency/the draft; hired a new googly-eyed head coach whose defining trait is mediocrity; hired a shouty asshole defensive coordinator whose pastimes include fever dream PowerPoints, Bountygate, and getting fired; signed a transcendent, totally undeserved free agent at running back who will probably ghost the team and be boogie-boarding in Miami come November when they’re 3-7; developed a likely bust at QB who looks like the bully antagonist in an “Air Bud” movie; and pushed embarrassing, XFL-caliber jerseys that were definitely created via the Poochie method. I know it’s trite to say, but fuck this team. They’re eternal green piss and the Goofus to competent NFL teams’ Gallant. My three happiest memories as a Jets fan came watching the (fucking) Patriots lose, and two of those times meant rooting for the Giants in the Super Bowl. Joe Namath’s voice gives me ulcers. Buttfumble. Smelly: Our Head Coach looks like the love child of Marty Feldman and Vladimir Putin. Our General Manager looks like the stand in for the inevitable Dana White sex tape. Our running back hasn’t played in over a year and will most certainly snap both Achilles tendons tripping over his naked houseguests, but only after they’ve robbed him of his Rolex. Our quarterback suffered a traumatic brain injury after hosting an awards show in New York City last winter. Our Defensive Coordinator is Gregg Williams. Fuck Gregg Williams. Matt: Gase rose to prominence as Peyton Manning’s OC during the 2013-14 season. The Broncos got trounced 43-8 in the Super Bowl by the Seahawks, only scoring one TD. After sticking around another year in Denver followed by a random and underwhelming year as OC for the Bears, Gase was hired by Miami in 2016 specifically to turn Ryan Tannehill into a franchise QB. Why he was deemed a QB whisperer I don’t know — it didn’t take a genius to turn Manning from a Hall of Famer into a slightly better resume’d Hall of Famer — but he got the gig anyway. He completely failed. Even when healthy, Tannehill completely sucked shit. Miami was also a mess while he was there, with stories of disgruntled players coming out seemingly every week. Enter the Jets. After living through years of an anemic and completely uninspiring coach in Todd Bowles, you would think that they would go the way some other successful teams are going right now; hiring a young innovative coach to implement a system and grow with the franchise QB. Instead we hired Gase, who brought along the same OC he had in Miami. Last season, per Football Outsiders, Miami was 27th out of 32 teams in offensive DVOA. This season is going to suck. Gase won’t last two years. At least he got the GM fired though! Kill me. Thomas: Before the 2014 NFL draft, Manish Mehta said he’d hitchhike home if John Idzik used all twelve draft picks that year. We used all 12 picks and Jets fans celebrated because Manish was too much of a coward to hitchhike home. Now, let’s name some guys after a quick check on wikipedia: Calvin Pryor Jace Amaro Dexter McDougle-Injured and AAF Jalen Saunders- CFL Shaquelle Evans- CFL Dakota Dozier- Vikings Jeremiah George Brandon Dixon-AAF Quincy Enunwa-STILL A JET AND NOT TOTALLY ASS!!! IK Enemkpali-Broke Geno Smith’s jaw Tajh Boyd-Retired Trevor Reilly-AAF Just Quincy and a bunch of fucking hitchhikers. Rich: September 23, 1991 was the day I gave up on the Jets. I’d been a Jets fan since 1971. I was a fan through the playoff barren 1970’s, the heartbreaking playoff loss to the Bills in 1981, the 10-1 collapse in 1986, blowing a 10-point lead with 4 minutes to play in Cleveland the same year. But that Monday night in September was the last straw. The Jets were up by 7 and HAD THE BALL with less than 2 minutes remaining. A fumble and a Bears TD on the final play in regulation sent the game to overtime. Pat Leahy misses a 28-yard FG. The Bears score to win the game and I’m done. I tell my friend Rick, a Cardinals fan, that I can’t root for the Jets any longer. He talks me off the ledge, telling me I can’t give up on my team. So I relent. The Jets actually make the playoffs in 1991, losing to the Oilers. Thanks to Rick, I got to continue to experience the joys of being a Jets fan. Kyle Brady. Vernon Gholston. Rich Kotite. The Fake Spike. Doug Brien’s two missed field goals in the 2004 OT loss to the Steelers. The Favre 8-3 collapse. The Butt Fumble. Fuck you Rick. Submissions for the NFL previews are already closed, alas. Next up: Oakland Raiders. 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