Thrown Away

If I don't add an entry, then the swarm of information from the intraweb overwhelms what there is of A Fan's Life. Seventy-nine entries, but "what have you done for us lately?" The same could be asked of the Jets, who labor at 1-6.

I have never known a Jets season to be so perfectly consistent in one weird statistic: game-closing interceptions. In weeks 2, 4, 6, and 7, Pennington (and Clemens week 2) has thrown the game away. He gets honorary mention for week 5 when the game against the Giants still seemed within reach late in the fourth quarter, though the Giants eventually won with more than just an interception of his pass for a touchdown. The Bengals just about finished us off with one late in the game last week. It adds a new stress to the question of whether Pennington should be benched, although one cannot ignore that his numbers are largely good throughout each game. But hey - who's really paying attention, anyway? The Giants are playing well, albeit against poor teams like the Jets, but even a Giants head cold gets more attention than a Jets clean bill of health, so why should anyone care about the Jets' woes?

I do, still. Of course. How is that ever going to change? I'm going over stats of the games and wondering the way a good Jets fan does; he considers what might have been. We've been lucky to walk away from games in the past, shaking our heads mostly with contentment and wonder. Now, not so much. All we can do is reflect on how close we've been. Great teams find a way to win, and though the Jets might not even be a good team this year, you'd hardly be a good Jets fan if you didn't consider what might have been if Pennington had made it on those final drives. Seriously, look at the game breakdowns. They might right now be 4-3, still wondering what kind of season they were having.

But here, in the reality-based fandom, we recognize what kind of season this is. We've had experience with disappointing performances for decades now. We know how the Jets are doing. The offense is cumbersome, uninspired, and apparently easy to read late in the game. Jonathan Vilma is out. This all sounds familiar. We like it better in the fantasy. Just end the season.