Let’s be completely sincere for a number of paragraphs:
That is one for the die-hards solely, for under the truest of the true believers, for the Jets followers who’re each bit as obsessive about Gang Inexperienced within the quiet soccer months of late spring and early summer season as they’re with the 17 video games of the season.
Anybody with something lower than a medical dependence on the Jets? They’re checking the TV listings for alternate options. They’ll spend what guarantees to be a cool however sunny day strolling in Central Park, taking in a matinee, cruising by means of a museum.
Jets-Dolphins?
For everybody else?
What’s the purpose? It will likely be a duel of third-string quarterbacks, Joe Flacco versus Skylar Thompson. It will likely be a matchup of groups that harbored far greater ambitions only a month and a half in the past — jeez, some have been even calling the Dolphins a sleeper to come back out of the AFC and attain the Tremendous Bowl — who at the moment are on matching five-game shedding streaks.
Solely the Bears (9 in a row), Cardinals (six) and Colts (six) are enjoying worse.
The Dolphins have been already quivering earlier than Tua Tagovailoa went down with one last concussion of the season. No matter hope the Jets had of receiving optimistic quarterback play went down in a hail of cracked Mike White ribs. Zach Wilson will gown Sunday, however there’s a real sense that the Jets will sooner favor to play Quinnen Williams at quarterback if something occurs to Flacco.
So, yeah. Good occasions at Laborious Rock Stadium!
What does that depart you as a Jets fan?
It leaves you this:
It leaves you, in case you are sufficiently old, pondering of the lyrics of an outdated Don Henley tune …
“That is the final/
Nugatory weekend/
That you just’ll must spend …”
As a result of it had higher be.
As a result of even in case you are essentially the most affected person fan, essentially the most resilient fan, essentially the most optimistic fan, essentially the most unflappable fan, you might have broached the start of the top of your surplus of endurance, resilience, optimism and … properly, flappability.
It’s now 12 full seasons with no playoff berth, which stays the longest drought in the complete league. It’s now seven full seasons with no severe run at a playoff sport (no, by now, this season doesn’t rely even when the Jets nonetheless had future in their very own fingers by means of 16 weeks and a still-real likelihood by means of 17).
It was unimaginable to know when the Jets left Buffalo after that long-ago Rex Bowl of Jan. 3, 2016, that they have been taking the entire retailer with them and dumping it in Lake Erie on the best way house. The Payments quarterback that day? Tyrod Taylor, who will play in one other meaningless sport Sunday, solely that one is a fortunately meaningless one for the Giants in Philadelphia.
Seven years and 5 days after that 22-17 loss to the Payments that saved the Jets out of the playoffs regardless of a 10-6 document, the Jets face one thing that they know higher than any crew within the NFL: one other nugatory last Sunday of the common season.
It needed to cease. Has to cease now.
Subsequent 12 months, Week 18 must be completely different. Has to imply one thing. No, let’s take it farther: It has to imply one thing even past still-in-the-hunt, one thing past win-and-you’re-in. It needs to be for seeding functions. It needs to be for — dare we are saying it — house subject. It needs to be for one thing actual.
It must be.
As a result of even when the Jets have gone from two to 4 to seven wins — which means that if the win Sunday in Miami they may have doubled their win totals in consecutive years, which needs to be an indication of progress — it certain doesn’t really feel that method. 5 straight losses have soured the feel-good nature of the seven wins that got here earlier than.
Jets followers — even the optimists, even the unflappables — don’t have an infinite provide of wait-till-next-year in them. And so they shouldn’t be requested to re-up. It must be completely different this time subsequent 12 months. Needs to be. For Jets followers, this should be the final nugatory weekend that they’ll must spend.
