And Here I Re-Publish the NY Times: "Jets In Certain Loss Until the Second Half"

by Vince Graylady, Sports Columnist for the New York Times

The unkempt hordes were treated to something akin to a complete victory when the Jets beat the New England Patriots Sunday 28-14. There were smiles of relief on the faces on fans departing the stadium Jets fans are compelled to share with New York's older, more storied franchise. But Serious Questions regarding the injuries to Darrelle Revis, Nick Mangold, Jason Taylor remain, as do concerns over the very existence of a team that a better class of New Yorkers regard as one would the development of a neck goiter.

The New York Jets were very nearly the same team that lost to the Baltimore Ravens last week - unimaginative, incoherent, bloated, loutish, confused, disoriented, and profane - yet somehow, through the mystical works of a universe guided by what appeared to be chance, the defense continued its relentless pressure against Tom Brady in almost the same way that the better-known New York franchise did two Super Bowls ago. Whether or not the Jets' defense would have been distracted by the presence of either of the women with whom Brady has produced children is uncertain. The verdict still remains on the attention span of such a Jets team, and thankfully Bill Belichick presented his detested rival with merely the Patriots' expected lineup. In this sense, one cannot entirely see the Jets' two-touchdown win as a complete victory over a vastly superior Patriots club.

Randy Moss scored his 150th touchdown, a stellar catch made with one hand - gesture that seemed destined to rank among the best of his Hall of Fame career. Meanwhile, the Jets did some things right. They completed passes, their offseason acquisition gained 76 yards on the ground, and the secondary appeared to be in the right places at the right times. That the Patriots did not score the entire second half signified that either the Patriots were doing poorly or that the Jets did well. Jets fans - corpulent, uneducated and rough - may have regarded it as a victory. Less partisan onlookers were prone to scratch it up to an unfortunate stroke of good fortune.

"When Moss got behind Revis to make a one-handed catch for a 34-yard touchdown," wrote George Vescey of this same publication, "the Jets had seemed to be in big trouble in their new home, with their own glib words coming back to haunt them." But even Vescey was forced to agree that the Jets had the game in hand by the fourth quarter. And to do it, "they didn’t need the reality-show language and bluster they exhibited on the television show Hard Knocks....The Jets did not need to make a spectacle of themselves, either on television or in their own locker room," he added, shaking his head in disappointment at the Jets' apparent victory.

The behavior of their coach, their assistants, and players in the presence of Ines Sainz continues to haunt the team. Even avid fans like Martin Roche, whose Jets blog has changed names too many times for the Times to count, has spoken out against the organized harassment of Sainz: "This is the kind of thing that makes me wonder why football itself is of more importance to me than issues of sanitation in the Third World."

The Times spends a great deal on its football coverage itself when its award-winning columnist Nicholas Kristoff is practically earning a Nobel Prize for Peace, and it makes the men who cover the Jets feel a crisp sense of shame that a good showing over the Patriots cannot help quell. In fact, Jets victories only seem to make it worse. The question is not so much whether or not the Jets can sustain their success without Darrelle Revis (a question they were wondering during training camp anyway) but whether or not the success the Jets have will force to compel a reader of the Times to imagine the distinctly unpleasant possibility witnessing a victory parade down Broadway filled with heavy men in Broadway Joe shirts.

Fortunately history tells us that the Jets won't get that far. Nevertheless, Times sources inside the Bloomberg government indicate that the current state of the city's economy would prohibit such a celebration.

Unless, of course, the Yankees repeat.

NY Jets #43 - Part 2

Do you recognize this man?

No? Don't even. To whit: Clarence Jackson, Jr. preferred to be called "Jazz" by his teammates. Out of respect for this, we speak of Jazz Jackson #43, a running back for the Jets from 1974-76. In the 1975 Jets Yearbook, he is crowned with dull distinction: "(Jazz) is a very muscular and durable runner despite his size" (5'8") and the "shortest Jet ever." This was before the arrival Bruce Harper, so not even that last comment holds true anymore. The only memory I have of him is an exhibition game against St. Louis in 1976 where he fumbled. He recovered it, though. The announcer on Channel 5 did that thing that all announcers do, putting words in the mouths of the players on TV. "Look at him," the announcer said. "Where the heck's that ball!? Get back here!"

Where indeed. Jackson's hands were in the right place at the right time in the second game of the 1974 season, at Soldier Field. "Clarence Jackson" recovered a fumble committed by, of all people, John Riggins and then ran it for a touchdown. Here it is, starting at the :34 mark. Don't neglect a chance to see Pat Summerall and Tom Brookshier in their nifty red blazers at the start of the video. They look like Avis ticket clerks.



The Jets won the game 23-21, their first of the season. They wouldn't win another game for six weeks. Then, having taken themselves out of the playoffs at 1-7, they would go on to win every game left in the season. This means that Jazz Jackson's accidental touchdown provided the only real link to winning that the Jets would have that whole season until they traveled to the Yale Bowl to play the Giants. It was a strange one as Jets seasons go, with a resurgence where the Jets usually flagged. They should offer college seminars on the subject of New York Jets' December downward spirals. Which one was your favorite? Why? Explain.

1974 New York Jets

Then in the middle of that season, Jackson started against Houston at Shea and scored the only other touchdown of his career, a 20-yard reception of a Namath pass. What I wouldn't give to hear that Beaver Falls accent say, "Nice one...Jazz," when he came to the sideline. We should all be so lucky. If Dad went to the Oilers game, he's not remembering it. I think the seed of his abandoning his beloved season tickets in 1977 was probably planted in that 1-7 nosedive in '74. He probably stayed home for most of the home games that season. Jazz Jackson's arrival didn't cause the Jets to start their franchise slide; he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, a choral performer during Namath's vanishing years.

Signed as an undrafted free agent in 1995, Vance Joseph #43 (left) played for a franchise about to hit a low much deeper than the one that came with Jazz Jackson's career. Ritchie Kotite's squad went 3-13 in '95, and that was the better of the two Kotite seasons. The Kotite years are the Years Of Shame. Every franchise has them. The Indianapolis Colts had them. The New England Patriots had them. Years of absolute incompetence at every conceivable level. For the New Orleans Saints that was the first twenty seasons. Vance Joseph could not have been comforted by this; none of us were. But looking at his wikipedia, Vance Joseph had long career after the pros coaching college football at his alma mater of Colorado, then at Wyoming and Bowling Green; this has then led him to his current position as secondary coach with former Jet Johnnie Lynn for the 49ers. He was an offensive player in college who would eventually end up coaching the defensive position to which he had to become accustomed as a undrafted pro. No scandal, no funny stories, no ambiguous connections between life and work, no shame. Just work.

There's no shame in being Roger Vick either, although he makes us feel shame sometimes because he was a draft bust. If the success of people who don't even know we exist makes us happier than our own achievements should, then their disappointments make us feel the same secret regrets that accompany our own persistent mistakes. Suffice it to say that the other undergraduate course that should be made available is the psychological study that bad draft choices have had on our club up until about 2000. Mel Kiper once said that "the Jets clearly have no idea what the draft is all about," and he was right (though I don't think anyone could say that about our last six or seven years in the draft, minus Vernon Gholsten). For a long time what the Jets didn't know about the draft you couldn't squeeze into the Meadowlands.

Drafted #1 by the Jets in 1987, Roger Vick #43 was the running back who was supposed to accompany or even replace Freeman McNeil. The fact that he was drafted at the start of a strike season would set anyone off course. He began his career in the pros at the same time I began college, and if the faculty had gone on strike in my freshman year, it would have thrown me off, too. His best season was 1988, with 660 total yards. Beyond that, his sun sets as fast as it does on a playoff Sunday. The famous video on Jets draft blunders includes Roger Vick, of course. In lieu of him, the Jets could have drafted Harris Barton, Bruce Armstrong, Jim Harbaugh or Cris Carter, all of whom were still available. It hurts a little.

But it's a good kind of pain, edifying to the soul, reminding us of life's inherent limits. Confronted with the draft, Jets fans are like the speaker in Claude McKay's "America" who "loves this cultured hell that tests my youth." Why do so few Giants fans go to the draft the way Jets fans do? It's simple. Jets fans are proud of and enriched by the hell that is the draft day blunder. To have survived it over and over is to be a true fan. The draft is the ceremony that embodies our most essential experience with mortality and powerlessness. The draft is the acreage in the soul where accident and design meet, a place where chaos reigns as management makes absolutely the wrong decision. You despair, and because of that, you are more equipped to handle the various bits of outrageously bad fortune that this ridiculous world throws at you. This why our fans are the Draft Day's mascots. Assembled on the upper deck of Radio City, they are like a profane Greek chorus, echoing all of our mortal anxieties in their familiar refrains:

Don't blow this. Don't. You'll probably screw this up.
Like you did with Lam Jones.
And Ken O'Brien.
And Blair Thomas.
And Roger Vick.
Please, not again.
You're going to blow it.
I just know it.

Always fascinating to see how the printed media (albeit online) in New York covers the Jets.

The Jets are traditionally a kind of muse for Newsday, the paper whose beat is the sprawl of the Island so many Jets fans historically call home. On page one, you will find a thoughtful piece on what Dr. King would say to President Obama, as well as a nice juicy slab of business about a young couple passed out in the middle of day (near the start of the Saints game, no less) in Suffolk County while their 3 year-old wandered the streets of Brentwood. Newsday has always walked the fine line; I recall delivering them for a neighbor while he was on vacation during the summer they finally apprehended Son of Sam, though I'm not sure I was savvy enough to notice their high- and lowbrow takes on the matter. At the top of the page, though, is a banner with the essential information about what you really want to know about: Jets vs. Colts. We know what you want.

The Times remains staid about it. There's too much going on in the world. Of course, the Old Gray Lady is correct, as she always is (well, except about initally supporting the Iraq War; oh, and about calling for Clinton's resignation; and oh, well, its plagiarism cases). My beloved team cannot compare with the catastrophe of Haiti, nor with the suicide bombings in Kabul. (By the way, a student last week tried speaking for Pat Robertson's sickeningly stupid claim about the quake being God's will; I wish that I had known that it was actually the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden Fault that runs parallel to Port-au-Prince that caused it, as I would have told her, although she certainly would have claimed that God put that fault there. God can do anything.) However, I was grateful that the Lady was kind enough to make the Jets the top story in the Sports section way down the page, especially when the Jets' win over Cincinnati last week fell second to the NFC playoff game that same day.

The Daily News puts the Jets atop their "Hot Topics," right ahead of the Golden Globes and the earthquake, which posts an impressive third place.

The Post puts the Jets first and foremost, while secondly speaking of machete-wielding gangs roaming Port-au-Prince. It claims that NYPD have also been silencing Duane Reade security guards in the Port Authority over reporting an increase in thefts, while they do their able best in the service of Rupert Murdoch by criticizing Governor Paterson for going out on a date.