Please don’t tell me these aren’t the Same Old Jets. Because they are.
I’ve been watching this team since I was a kid in the 70s. I can tell you where I was watching Richard Todd get intercepted by Bill Simpson in the Wild Card game. I can tell you where I was for the Mud Bowl. I can tell you where I was when Mark Gastineau was called for roughing the passer against Cleveland.
Any tried and true Jet fan in my age group can recite the same information. And that is why the events of this week around the Jets just smack of Same Old Jets.
After the season opening stinker against the Ravens, Jet fans were euphoric when Gang Green beat the hated Patriots on Sunday. But the pall around the team, despite the on field ups and down, continues to grow. Rex Ryan and the gang can be as positive as they want, but this morning’s arrest of Braylon Edwards for DUI is enough to club a Jet fan into submission.
Let’s look at what we have already this season, just two weeks into things…
–The Darrelle Revis holdout
–The fallout from the Jets’ behavior on “Hark Knocks”
–The preseason injury to Calvin Pace
–The Ines Sainz fiasco
–The season ending (and probably career ending) injury to Kris Jenkins
–The injury to Darrelle Revis
–The Edwards arrest
That is an awful lot of bad things to happen to one team before September has even come to a close. And it is starting to feel like that other shoe is about to drop. The big one this time.
Don’t get me wrong. I still think this team can go a long way. Pace and Revis will be back by the beginning of October, if not earlier. Santonio Holmes’ suspension has two weeks remaining. The Edwards brouhaha will blow over. I’m still going to wear my jersey on game days, and root like hell. But I’ve got that strange feeling that something bigger than all of this is still to come.
Why? Because this team just cannot make things easy. Because karma is a bitch, and many people feel Ryan has some bad karma on its way to bite him in the ass. Because where there is smoke, there is fire, and the Jets organization is billowing smoke.
Because at the end of the day, these are still the Same Old Jets.
