Just End The Suffering

By the time I got to the bar after work, Geno already threw his third interception on just his eighth pass of the game, probably ending his Jets career and ruining another Sunday for Jets Nation. I'm not angry or upset anymore. What I am is worse, apathetic. After another miserable Jets loss Sunday, this time at the hands of Kyle fucking Orton (not even his brother Randy) and the Buffalo Bills I just feel numb to the losing.

I'm tired of writing the same article every Miserable Monday of this season, and I'm sure you're tired of reading it too. There really is nothing left to say. Rex Ryan should "resign as the HC of the NYJ" like a hoodie wearing Parcells-ite did 15 years ago to save face. This is a terrible football team put together by an incompetent architect, John Idzik. Percy Harvin can't save us, Mike Vick can't save us, hell, Joe Namath in his prime wouldn't be enough to save us this time. 

Losing seven straight games is almost unheard of in the NFL. With parity you would have imagined that even by blind luck Gang Green would win a game, instead the Football Gods just point and laugh at us for almost 2 months.We will always have the first game and a quarter of the football season when we beat the winless Raiders and went up 21-0 at Lambeau Field. After this game I can stop worrying about us going on a little win streak to ruin our chance at a top 5 pick. At this point, Jameis Winston might go on a crime spree stealing crab legs all around the country so he doesn't wind up in the green and white next year. 

If the Bills were almost any other football team, the game would have been over at halftime. In spite of our six turnovers. they teased us, giving us a small glimmer of hope that with Michael Vick we had a real-life Madden restart (don't lie we've all done it in franchise mode). Then the Same Old Jets reared their ugly head, down just 27-17, we tried a trick play on special teams that words can't describe, giving our offense the ball at the 3 yard line. We didn't score again until there was just 4:06 left in the game down 43-17. 

I'm not going to take the route of screaming and cursing saying that I'm done being a Jets fan. I'm a sheep and I know it. Like millions of us though, I will keep torturing myself watching 4 quarters of Jets football every Sunday (even worse, I will be at Metlife for the slaughter against the Steelers).  As far as the 2014 Jets go though, they are officially irrelevant. The team is untalented and they are led by a clueless GM. Turn off the lights, it's over.

Decker Right in The Percy

A 6-game losing streak will force you to make changes to your football team. Rex Ryan is still safe after the Jets played hard for their head coach against both the Broncos and Patriots. However, according to Jay Glazer, the Jets have traded a conditional draft pick for Percy Harvin. Through six games this season Harvin has 22 receptions for 133 yards, and rumors are that he wasn't happy with his role in Seattle, after signing a 6-year $64 million contract last year.

There is no doubt that he is a playmaker that will automatically make the Jets offense more dangerous. Harvin can be used running the ball in the backfield and catching it out of the slot, as well as being a dangerous return man (where the Jets have had trouble). However, he is an injury prone player and could become a bad locker room guy, like Santonio Holmes. The one good sign is that the majority of his guaranteed money has already been paid by the Seahawks, so this is a low risk-high reward move.

The bottom line on this trade is that he brings a unique threat that our offense has lacked. On Mike Francesa's show Glazer confirmed that it was a mid-round pick which is cheap for a talented football player. At 1-6  this is a move for the future. Idzik has finally listened to the fans after keeping Woody's money warm all offseason. Maybe if the team can finish strong then Rex can salvage is job, but his future is still very pessimistic. 

Jets-Pats

Gang Green knew they were playing for their beloved head coach's life. They did almost everything right against Belichick, Brady, and the hated Pats. The Jets ran the ball for 218 yards, while controlling the clock for almost 41 minutes to the Patriots 19. Geno played his best game of the season, throwing for 226 yards and a touchdown, giving Nick Folk a shot at a miracle 58-yard field goal (that was blocked). At the end of the day though, the result was the same, and the sixth straight loss of our season from hell, losing 27-25 in Foxboro. 

Rex Ryan was defiant at the podium. He knows that the time is ticking. The stats say that the Jets have a chance at the playoffs still, as does any team just seven games into the season, but in all intents and purposes the season is over. All signs are pointing towards Rex's run with the Jets ending without a visit to the White House, just like every coach since Weeb Ewbank. 

The fact of the matter is that the Jets just aren't talented enough to beat the upper echelon of the league without playing mistake-free football. If you told any Jets fan that we would double the time of possession and not turn the ball over, we would bet the mortgage on them. However, settling for 4 first half field goals when just one trip into the end zone would have been enough to win. The Patriots' 19-yard touchdown to Danny Amendola on 3rd and goal with 7:49 left exposed our unexperienced secondary. The margin for error on this football team is simply too thin. Any small mistake will make the difference between winning and losing (Al Pacino is right, football is a game of inches).

The good news is with nine games left, it doesn't appear that this team is going to fold up shop. That is why Rex Ryan earned his contract extension after last season. If Gang Green keeps on putting together performances like this, it will be hard for Idzik to look in the mirror and place the blame on Rex for the 1-6 start. That feel-good karma could change in the blink of an eye though, if losses to the Patriots and Broncos turn into blowouts losses against the Bills and Chiefs, but that has yet to be seen. All I know is my football season is over on October 17th and it sucks.

The End is Here

After an "ass-whipping" by the hands of the San Diego Chargers on Sunday, Rex Ryan started his press conference by apologizing to Jets fans "...if there are any left". Rex however, shouldn't be the one apologizing. Rex is right, this loss is on "one man" and it's not the jolly not-so-fat man. Instead, John Idzik's failures to put a competitive football team on the field the past two years turns the temperature up on Ryan's hot seat.

This Jets season is teetering on the brink at 1-4. A team that we thought would be different, even when neon lights as bright as the Vegas Strip were telling us otherwise. The secondary is ATROCIOUS and the lack of playmakers on offense lead to a lethal combination.

I'm going to hold off Rex's obituary until Idzik decides to bring the hammer down on him, even though it isn't fair. This franchise hit a high point in January of 2011. It hit a major bump in the road when Victor Cruz went 99-yards on Christmas Eve of 2011, hit another bump when Sanchez butt-fumbled on Thanksgiving of 2012, and before Halloween of 2014 the back-to-back AFC Championship Game appearances feel as old as Joe Willy wagging his finger in 1969.

The tragic R-word seems to be where the Jets are headed. Rex is going to be gone, Geno is going to be gone, but the architect (not George Costanza) John Idzik is going to get a free pass. It's insane to me how a team playing in the swamps of East Rutherford, just a few miles from Manhattan are saving over $20 million in salary cap space when there are clear holes on this football team (Idzik have you met Mr. Wilpon?).

I'm not going to go into go into the franchise's long term plans yet. We still have 11 games left on the schedule for this season. The first question we need to answer is who should start at quarterback the rest of the season? Geno Smith has been under a lot of fire both for his poor play and off the field incidents. After snapping at a fan last week, Smith forgot how to tell time and missed a team meeting this past Saturday, inexcusable for any player (let alone a quarterback under siege).  Smith was benched for the second time in his career on Sunday, this time for Michael Vick.

Vick is some fans' wet dream, but at 34 years old he isn't a long term solution. If Rex is going to try making a move now is the time to do it though. At 1-4, with games against the Broncos and Patriots 4 days apart, Gang Green can't afford to go 1-6 behind a shaky Geno. However, Vick looked either rusty or old himself against San Diego, going 8-19 for 47 yards, but was held until his last drive with the game clearly out of hand. If you keep Geno in for these next two games, a quarterback change at 1-6 doesn't make any sense. I'd rather just die with our second year player and then go after someone in the 2015 Draft.

At the end of the day though, it's clear that the offense the way it's currently constituted isn't ready to start winning football games (no matter who's at quarterback) . Eric Decker, who we brought in to be a major playmaker, has been hampered with a hamstring that continually gets worse instead of better. Chris Johnson has been a huge disappointment, with his fumble on Sunday pretty much ending any chance we had of a comeback. While Chris Ivory has ran the ball hard, we abandon the run too early because of the early deficit we dig ourselves into.

There's no denying that this team has one foot in the grave, but this NFL season has been crazy so far, and any team can win on any given Sunday. That's what I have to keep telling myself at least.