Some people are fans of the New York Jets. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the New York Jets. This 2020 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your team: New York Jets.
Your 2019 record: 7-9. I was agog at that record when I saw it again over the summer. I was like THEY WON SEVEN GAMES? YEAH RIGHT AND I CAN MAKE FLAPJACKS USING ONLY MY DICK. Then I went back through the schedule game by game and, oh right, they started 1-7. Extremely clarifying. Of the six wins that followed for the Jets, only one came against a team with a winning record, and that was in Week 17 against a Buffalo team that—and somehow this is ALSO true—already had its playoff seeding locked up and nothing to play for. This is the highest a dead cat has ever bounced. Like someone dropped one onto a fucking trampoline for 19 stories up.
But the Jets still packed their usual amount of Jetsiness into that empty moral victory of a season. For example, left guard Kelechi Osemele had to go to an outside doctor to get a proper diagnosis on his injured shoulder, and then the Jets refused to allow him to get a necessary operation on that shoulder. In fact, they fined him every day he missed practice because of it. Osemele got the surgery anyway. WHOA HEY THERE ARE MAGGOTS IN THIS THING DOC!
The Jets released Osemele after his surgery rather than place him on IR. A few previews ago, I said that no team in the league hates its own players more than the Panthers. I was wrong. The Jets hate the Jets almost as much as Bill Belichick does. You don’t start the immortal Luke Falk at quarterback after he’s had just one practice because you LIKE Luke Falk. You do it because you resent that he looks like football Daniel Radcliffe.
The Jets also blew a 16-point second-half lead to Buffalo, which shouldn’t be possible. They signed Le’Veon Bell, who averaged 3.2 yards a carry and scored exactly one rushing touchdown. They cut their third-round draft pick before the season even started. And I haven’t even gotten to Sam Darnold’s zeppelin of a spleen. Sit down and have a pork roll, egg, and cheese. The damage chronicled herein will be even more extensive than what they found inside Kelechi Osemele’s body.
Your coach: STILL ADAM GASE! HOW? WHY? WHAT? JUH?
I don’t think any coach in the world was more excited for the pandemic than this man. I have no evidence of this, but I firmly believe that Adam Gase gave himself the rona so that he could quarantine within quarantine: sequestering himself inside his basement, studying tape until his eyeballs droop into his beard, and sleeping in a fucking cardboard box for 30 minutes a night. I have never seen a coach who works this hard to be this fucking terrible. Even Jon Gruden is astonished. But look at how much Gase’s players love him! LIKE NOW-SEAHAWK JAMAL ADAMS!
“As a leader, what really bothers me is that he doesn’t have a relationship with everybody in the building. At the end of the day, he doesn’t address the team. If there’s a problem in the locker room, he lets another coach address the team. If we’re playing shitty and we’re losing, he doesn’t address the entire team as a group at halftime. He’ll walk out of the locker room and let another coach handle it.”
Ooh! Ooh! Lemme guess which assistant gets to handle that!
That’s defensive coordinator and delusional asshat Gregggggggggg Williams, who Odell Beckham accused of orchestrating the dirty hit on him that cost him the first week of the 2017 season. Gregg Williams? Ordering dirty hits? THE ONLY CHEAP SHOTS I SEE HERE ARE FROM THE CANCEL CULTURE. Anyway, join us in November when Gregg orders his defensive end to stuff a covid-infected washcloth into Cam Newton’s anus. Not only are Adam Gase and Gregg Williams both terrible retread coaches, but Gase's father-in-law and Williams's son are also on staff. Why anyone would want MORE of these guys’ DNA lying around is beyond me.
I still firmly believe that the Jets hired Adam Gase specifically because he was the most unsettling candidate available. "This guy looks like he wants to telekinetically make somebody's head explode, and that's what we look for in a coach!" This will be Gase’s final season as a head coach anywhere in the NFL. So savor it all: the bloodshot eyes, the random alienation of good players, the charm-free sarcasm at every postgame presser. You won’t see any of this again … until the Jets hire Matt Patricia in January.
Your quarterback: My ex-son Sam Darnold, who was famously laid up last year with the world’s longest bout of mono. The Jets have the all-time most pathetic QB gif in the Buttfumble, but they went ahead and challenged their own crown with the Darnold mono meme. Remarkable. Darnold also lost a toenail. Not since Robert Griffin III has an NFL quarterback suffered so many unorthodox injuries. With Gase still around, the possibilities for Darnold and the injury report are breathtakingly vast. Dislocated nipples. Pickled testicles. Fractured ass cheeks. Jarred ankles. Psoriasis of the taint. FULL DEMONIC POSSESSION!
That’s an NFL quarterback daring to express his humanity for a grand total of two seconds. Well you better believe that Coach Gase did NOT like what he saw on the film.
"It bothers me, it bothers the organization," coach Adam Gase said Tuesday, 12 hours after a 33-0 loss to the New England Patriots… "Obviously, you never anticipate something like that happening. The fact that it did, it gives us pause to really cooperate anymore because I don't know how we can allow our franchise quarterback to be put out there like that."
BITCH YOU LOST 33-0. Bill Belichick took deliberate penalties just to send your ass home faster. Imagine losing like that and believing your quarterback’s moment of honesty was the one thing that made you look bad. You know you coach the Jets, right? You don’t coach the Steelers or the Packers. You coach a freakshow. YOU ARE DUMB AS A FUCKING MOUNTAIN.
When Darnold gets a banana peel stuck in his pancreas later this fall, your backup options are a beyond finished Joe Flacco and the ever aptly named David Fales. All three of these men will start at least one game for the Jets this season. The empty stadium surrounding them will feel redundant.
What’s new that sucks: Frank Gore deserves so much better than to end his career here. But money is money, so the most consistent running back since Emmitt Smith is here to make Bell’s contract look even worse than it did a year ago. The best wideout on hand is either Breshad Perriman, who salvaged his reputation last year in Tampa when he caught a whopping 36 passes, or Jamison Crowder, who never met a punt he couldn’t drop. Immortal non-chef Robby Anderson went to the Panthers. Osemele left for Kansas City because he’s not an idiot. Trumaine Johnson, heir to this team’s legacy of free agent corner busts, was cut loose into outer space. And, of course, Jamal Adams was dealt for two first-round draft picks, which the Jets will let GM Joe Douglas piss away a week before firing him. This is the worst roster in football. I hate it.
Elsewhere, absentee owner and living pun Woody Johnson apparently spent his time as UK ambassador bitching about the existence of Black History Month. He’s the NYPD’s favorite NFL owner.
What has always sucked: I thought I might be able to spend the entirety of 2020 without the Jets. That would have been the ONE good thing to happen to America all year. But no, they’re still here and still the preferred team of tri-state shitbags who actively despise New York proper. Every Jets game has the energy of a Blue Lives Matter protest in Islip. Every Jets opponent can barely muster any excitement handing them their asses. Every Jets fan is Andrew Cuomo without a job. Just a collection of aspiring bouncers who are like EYYYYYY I’M FUCKING ITALIAN HERE! while they donate their meager earnings to their favorite local organized crimelord and beg for proper recognition after cleaning up after their own insurance fires. I’m sick to death of Jets fans pretending like they have a real team. We all are. You think I give half a fuck when the Post cooks up a OUTTA GASE back page for the 60th day in a row? I don’t.
What might not suck: I have nothing, and neither do you.
Ratto says: "No. I refuse. You can't make me. On results, this should have been part of our Why Your Favorite Sun Belt Team Sucks preview, but because there's no relegation, I simply decline to look at their depth chart, cap room, uniform changes or Adam Gase's sociopath eyes. Oh, and Woody Johnson is worse than his team, which not only makes him worse than the whiniest Jet fan ever (which is nearly all of them), it also tells you more than I will ever intend to do. Now shove off and go stare into the sun."
HEAR IT FROM JETS FANS!
Mike:
I lost my dad on 9/11 and I'm not sure if that was even my worst experience with New York jets.
Jasper Wang:
Last year a friend texted me "oh fuck fuck fuck I think Trevor Siemian is seriously injured" and that was WEEK TWO.
Brian:
The owner may have committed some light treason.
Lee:
Goddamn fuck Adam Gase.
Cullen:
Bill Belichick is an immortal Lovecraftian deity sent to fulfill the bargain I’m almost certain Joe Namath made with the Dark Powers in order to win Super Bowl III.
Josh:
Fuck Woody Johnson with a COVID-19 covered pike. Congrats on the new site though.
Rob:
Being at our games is merely a ritual observance for being a Jets fan, like a Catholic whose faith has long left them.
Thomas:
WFAN callers are debating which of the following gives us the best shot at quarterback this weekend against the Patriots: 58 year-old Boomer Esiason or Le'Veon Bell. It is September 18th, 2019.
Brian:
The Jets fired their General Manager after letting him fuck up the 2019 draft. The guy they hired to replace him just traded their best player. The Jets have made 65 first round draft picks in their history. Only two have gone to the Hall of Fame.
Mike:
The most joy the Jets have brought me, by a significant margin, was catching a t-shirt out of the air from a t-shirt cannon during a preseason game, even if it was a XXXL and is definitively a sleep shirt.
Jamal Adams will go on to be a Hall Of Famer for the Seahawks, and we will use those picks on two D-linemen who will be arrested either for bringing guns through airport security or doing 100 in a school zone. Or both somehow.
Sal:
Even our god damned owner is the worst fucking diplomat for the worst fucking president.
Joe:
When the Jets used a second round pick on Christian Hackenberg, my dad, a lifelong Jets fan, looked me straight in the eye and said "He could be good, you don’t know." My brain and my soul are still recovering from that sentence to this very day.
Isaac:
Our best QB in my lifetime was Ryan Fitzpatrick. Our best player, full stop, left us to win a Super Bowl with our biggest rival. And most importantly, Rex Ryan is just Chris Christie with a foot fetish.
John:
My PSU-alum brother photoshopped Christian Hackenberg into a Jets uniform the night he was drafted.
Roy:
This fucking team just traded its best player for future picks during a global pandemic where we all could be dead in six months.Sam Darnold is the one decent thing to happen to this team since we all pretended Rex Ryan’s foot fetish was cute, and we’re going to ruin him with a coach who made Jay Cutler look likable when they were together in Miami.
Vic:
I have Pennington and Tebow jerseys and I am ashamed of it.
Ethan:
Our last Super Bowl is closer in time to the end of World War One than it is to the present day.
Jaycob:
Usually when a team deals you multiple 1st round draft picks for a player, there's at least something to be excited about.
Kyle:
I'm looking forward to Sam playing out a respectable career in, let’s say Pittsburgh or Chicago.
Andrew:
I love it when my team hires a coach that resents the fact the the players are more likable than him.
Steven:
Four more years of soul-crushing decline being sold as a ticket to the promised land by a comically inept and corrupt organization whose main media figure is a doddering septuagenarian best known now for expressing his desire to assault women on TV.
Mike:
We just traded the first all pro we've drafted for the draft pick smorgasbord and all I can think was at least he didn't go to the fucking Cowboys.
Peggy:
The pain of Jamal Adams dumping the Jets can only be compared to your crush telling the entire school that you are super gross and you smell like a loser and he’d rather move across the country than be caught dead with you.
Martin:
I may never go to another Jets game again. Fuck Adam Gase. And fuck the Jamal Adams jersey I only bought 11 months ago.
Adam:
When I was younger, my father would joke with me that he would die before the Jets made another Super Bowl. That was probably 25 years ago. He's still alive, but...
Andrew:
I am legitimately excited about the possibility of not seeing the Jets play this year. The emergence of a global pandemic may lower my blood pressure by outright canceling a season where I know we'll go 6-10 despite the absence of Tom Brady.
Dan:
Woody Johnson tried to get the British Open to Trump’s property, so Turnberry can sell 10 extra chicken ala kings every weekend from the exposure. Woody would go down on the queen if Trump needed a 1% tax break on that shithole golf course.
Colin:
Joe Douglas somehow managed to get two first round draft picks and more for trading away a talented player in Jamal Adams who clearly wanted out. I started to think, like I have many times, that this was a chance for the Jets to move on with a fresh start now that there was a competent GM in the building.
No more than three days after the trade, Douglas comes out and says Adam Gase is the right coach for this team.
Rory:
Adam Gase is always in a Dylanesque fight with the press, which is all well and good when you're Bob Dylan but a pretty terrible look when you've had one winning season in four years as an NFL head coach.
Jets beat writers (what's good, Rich Cimini!) seem to absolutely despise the very franchise they cover, which, frankly, none of the level-headed fans among us can blame them for.
Adam Gase never doesn't look like he's absolutely shocked at reality itself. Every picture that exists of him makes him look like he's just gained the ability to see for the first time.
After floating his name at the trade deadline last year and not doing anything, the Jets traded Jamal Adams, the best player on the team, at least a year ahead of time because he was getting into Instagram fights for a 30-year-old journeyman and some draft flotsam.
Little brother syndrome in this city is at its strongest when, every year, the Jets trot out Joe Namath, a guy who was last relevant during the Nixon administration, for a ceremonial coin toss and remembrance of the last time the Jets won a game that mattered, literally over half a century ago.
Going to a Jets bar is akin to attending Tommy's hit in GoodFellas, with even more racism and even less hope.
Our starting quarterback's biggest contribution so far has been as the center of a meme graphic that began with him having mononucleosis.
Is there a worse uniform in the NFL - nay, even in North American professional sports - than the Jets' current unis? We look like we filtered the Eagles' colors through a Create-a-Team program in 2008
All Jets fans know this team is destined to again go 7-9, overpay for some C-grade linebacker next offseason, draft a guy who will be out of the league within four years and repeat the cycle ad infinitum.
Matt:
Most people remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they first heard news of 9/11. For me, the buttfumble is a similar memory in that I remember in vivid detail exactly where I was and what I was doing the moment it happened. I was at my friend’s house spending the day with his family enjoying Thanksgiving dinner. My friend had never really watched football growing up and didn’t know how it was played, but was eager to learn, and so I was explaining to him what was happening on each play. And then it happened. I was midway through a sentence explaining the play when Sanchez ran into the back of Moore, and fumbled for a returned touchdown. I didn’t finish my sentence. My friend asked me, “What just happened?” and I said, “Don’t watch football.”
Brian:
Robert Wood Johnson is the name of a large hospital network in New Jersey. It was named for the former president of Johnson & Johnson, Woody’s grandfather and namesake. About 8-9 years ago my friend, a long-time disgruntled Jets season ticket holder called me and asked if Woody owned the hospital. “No. Why?”, I replied. He was having intense belly pains and needed to go to the ER. Being between jobs with no heath insurance he feared getting a large bill. He stated he would rather be in intense internal pain than give more of his money to Woody Johnson.
November 2018, Jets hosted the Bills. Buffalo had signed Matt Barkley that week off his couch. He had not been in the NFL for 2 years but was starting this game. In line to get in to the stadium some young kid was excitedly talking to his father. The guy behind them then says in the thickest “LawnGuyLand” accent, “Da’ Bills just signed a guy off his couch to play quarterback. There’s no way da’ Jets lose today”. Barkley shook off 2 years of rust on the first drive hitting a 47-yard bomb for a touchdown. The Jets lost 41-10, the game included a play in which 3 different Jets were called for holding.
Morristown Airport is 2.7 miles from the Jets facility according to Google Maps. It is the airport that Air Force One flies into when Trump is staying at his New Jersey golf course. Well if its good enough for the POTUS is should be good enough for Woody Johnson, right? Woody fought the town of Florham Park to install a helipad at the Jets facility, flying into the airport and being driven 2.7 miles was not good enough for him. Neighbors tried to fight it citing noise issues, but the billionaire band-aid heir got what he wanted. Last time I was at Jets training camp the helipad was covered with inflatable children’s slides and a tent hawking the team’s shitty new jerseys.
Chris:
The only quarterback in team history to ever win a Super Bowl has now been reduced to shilling shady Medicare plans on TV (can't wait for the inevitable investigation into that company). I swear, I've seen that commercial so many times I hear the words "ENROLLMENT IS NOT AUTOMATIC!!!" in my sleep.
Also Adam Gase looks like Prince William's twin who was locked in a windowless basement for most of his life.
Scott:
Jets fans: Just keep our All Pro defensive back, the only homegrown talent you’ve developed in the last decade.
Jets FO: Not so fast, sports fan. An All Pro DB is just an All Pro DB, but a draft pick could be anything! It could even be an All Pro DB! You know we’ve always needed one of those!!
Jets fans: Then let’s jus...
Jets FO [to Seattle]: We’ll take the draft picks!
Jack:
I called the Jamal Adams debacle a while ago. He was so funny and charismatic interacting with fans on insta videos during training camp, he was far and away our best player, the face of the team, and our only pro bowler. I said to myself, and in comments on Jets Instagram, “we’re going to find a way to alienate this guy. He’s too good and too likeable. Mark my words.” I was accused of not “being a real fan”. Lo and behold! He’s now on the Seahawks.
I hate this team.
Sean:
Over the countless hours of quarantine media consumption this year, I re-watched "Band of Brothers" and was struck by a particular episode: the one about bewildered asshole Lt. Dike.
For those who haven't watched, Dike is portrayed as this perennially dazed weirdo who has zero rapport with his unit, stays back during combat, and goes for random long walks, leaving others in the unit to figure shit out for themselves. Dike is unsurprisingly replaced after a needlessly botched mission.
Adam Gase is the Jets' Lt. Dike.
Connor:
Plenty of people will talk about Mononucleosis but I want to talk about the GM sent down by God. Per the Jets beat writers and many fans, the greatest moment of the last decade for this team has been hiring Joe Douglas, and every bad decision has been worth to lead to this. I don't think I've ever seen a team celebrating the hire of a general manager who had never done the job before. But reading articles you would think we'd liberated Paris from the Nazis. Who the fuck is Joe Douglas and why am I supposed to cheer when he does the exact same moves every new regime does? Oh shit, he sent a bunch of veterans he didn't sign or draft out of town, what a visionary. Maybe he'll make a commitment to rebuild this team 'from the trenches'.
I don't understand how I keep doing this, because at some point this is my fault, right?
Michael:
Have you ever tried to make a “Mt. Rushmore” for the Jets? It’s really fucking hard, and not just because the concept is stupid to begin with. No, it’s really hard because outside of Don Maynard and Curtis Martin, every other player you’d consider putting on it is embarrassing in one way or another. Let's take a look at the other candidates:
Joe Namath: A mediocre quarterback who, during his playing years, was more famous for running his mouth and guest starring on variety TV shows than he was at throwing touchdowns, of which he threw 47 fewer than he did interceptions. After his playing years he was more known for going on TV hammered and trying to make out with Suzy Kolber.
Mark Gastineau: A mulleted shithead who was such an aggro dickhead that he committed a roughing the passing penalty to help the fucking BROWNS win a playoff game. He also crossed the picket line the second the 1987 strike happened and wouldn’t have put up the numbers he did if Joe Klecko wasn't there to open up holes for him. Speaking of which…
Joe Klecko: The dude used to truck Dwight Stephenson and Anthony Munoz for a living but still can’t ginny up an effective Hall of Fame campaign. Also he was convicted of insurance fraud and killed a guy in a car accident once.
Darrelle Revis: I had to watch him sign with and win a Super Bowl with the Pats. Then he re-signed with the Jets for a 5 year, $70 million contract and decided to check the fuck out once his check cleared. He only ended up playing two of those five years.
Nick Mangold: MAGA chud, just like our shitheel of an owner
The rest of my favorite teams have been just as miserable and unsuccessful for most of my life, but the Jets are completely and utterly irredeemable, and if they had never won Super Bowl III they'd be football's version of the Nets. Unwanted, unloved, and without a clear reason to exist. And at least the Nets had Jason Kidd.
Matt:
A few years ago, the NFL decided that they were going to upload one historic game per team to YouTube, so you could relive classic victories of your team anytime you wanted. The way that the NFL decided which game to upload was by setting up a poll on each team’s Facebook page, which you, as the fan, could go to and vote. I went to the Jets’ page and found that there are such slim pickings of historically great games that a fucking regular season game made its way onto the list. Out of curiosity, I went to the Patriots’ Facebook page to see that they had three Super Bowl games, an AFC Championship game and a divisional round playoff game to choose from. So I reported the post and asked Facebook to delete the Patriots’ Facebook account.
Cullen:
When I was in grade school in 1996, my father bought me a nice Jets varsity jacket. A month or two later he asked me why I never wore it. I told him that I didn’t like being made fun of - the other kids teased me because the team was so bad. The Jets went on to finish 1-15 that year. My dad wrote the front office a letter after they fired Al Groh stating that if they screwed up the next coaching hire, he wouldn’t be a fan any longer and wouldn’t let me be one either. They hired Bill Parcells and my dad was satisfied. We stayed fans. I wish they’d hired literally anyone else.
Mike:
With our luck, Sam Darnold will turn into Jair Bolsonaro and get COVID 5 different times.
Submissions for the NFL previews are closed. Next up: Las Vegas Raiders.
