Cautious Optimism in a Bleak Jets World

How can I be optimistic for the Jets after the disaster of the Mets this season?

Hours away from the most anticipated Jets game in a decade, I find myself running through the reasons why I’m feeling so hesitant and so calculated with my hope for this season.

My promise to you, dear reader, is to never fabricate any feelings, ruminations, or events that comprise my relationship with being a sports fan. In doing so, please note that those italicized sentences above were ones I had drafted for this article before closing my laptop and heading to my local sports bar for the Jets season opener …. We all know what happened four plays into the Aaron Rodgers era. So now I’ll try to articulate the gestalt of how I feel.

Before Aaron Rodgers’ season-ending injury, I was indeed already writing about the topic of appropriately setting expectations for this Jets season in the aftermath of the debacle of the 2023 Mets.

In mid-March, right around the time Rodgers-to-Jets seemed inevitable, I was preparing for the upcoming Mets season (one that is apparently still going on!). Coming off an 101 win season, this 2023 Mets team was the franchise’s most hyped in a generation, having expectations for a World Series run.

But early on, the Vegas odds and Flushing odd-balls alike were in for a shock. Two weeks before the season began, Mets dynamic closer Edwin Diaz tore his patellar tendon in an exhibition game, not by pitching but by celebrating. In a freak accident, the Mets bullpen X-factor was done for the year. The regular season would begin without him and although the Mets got off to a hot 14-7 start, they quickly thereafter dove into mediocrity. Hastened by a lack of team chemistry and Cy Young winners Justin Verlander’s and Max Scherzer’s inability to win, the Mets began a tailspin. The reigning batting champ Jeff McNeil was hitting just .260, Starling Marte was swinging at everything, and every player in the lineup seemed to be simultaneously regressing.

This team with such high hopes never regained its footing, proving to be in a different stratosphere than their rival Braves whom the Mets had tied wins just the year prior. After being far from a playoff team in July, Mets owner Steve Cohen threw in the towel, trading Verlander and Scherzer for draft picks to build for a brighter future.

Once thought of as a World Series bound team, the Mets, for the final two months of the season, received the biggest ruin that New York fans and media can bestow - ambivalence.

In March, I looked at a successful season through a crystal ball the size of the Home Run Apple, but alas the Mets twisted my semblance of rhyme, reason, and rationality.

If these Mets were capable of croaking, I thought to myself, I would be wise to curb a similar enthusiasm over this upcoming Jets team. A similar level of hype that, like with the Mets, comes once in a generation.

The Mets and Jets have long been associated together.

From 1964 to 1983, the Jets shared a home with the Mets at Shea Stadium, and the association with both the Mets and playing near LaGuardia Airport prompted the previously named Titans to change to the Jets ( in other words, rhyming with Mets isn’t a coincidence). Sharing a stadium in Queens was the reason why neighboring residents around Queens, Brooklyn, and Long Island rooted for both these teams, passing that fandom to children and grandchildren.

I write this aside to remind you that Mets-Jets fandom is based on logical geographical bearings and not a choice of masochism. Most people think that the Mets-Jets conjunction is due to the fan’s lack of sensibility, but I assure you it is not.

Fast forward to the Sept. 11, 2023 - the Jets season opener.

Here I am at Stoney’s Bar and Grill in Denver, sitting at a high top with my friend amidst dozens of other tables full of amped Jets fans. ESPN’s Monday Night Football broadcast begins and Aaron Rodgers runs out onto MetLife Stadium holding a massive American flag. The moment sinks in.

Like someone going through a trance, I see everything that had led to this flash before me.

I think about March 15th, the day I watched Aaron Rodgers tell Pat McAfee he wants to be a Jet.

Beginning from the ides of March, I receive a barrage of texts:

• Do you think you’ll get Rodgers?

• How crazy would it be if the Jets got Rodgers?

• You pumped for #12?

• You think A-Rod is happening?

• Would Aaron make the Jets a contender?

I then think about April 24th, the day Aaron Rodgers officially became a Jet.

From that day throughout early summer, I’m immersed in a bombardment of small talks and chit-chats, coming from both casual acquaintances and ride-or-die friends, asking about you-know-who.

But no matter how many times I allude to my anticipation for Rodgers, especially during his national expośe on Hard Knocks, I always keep my cool, never wavering from lessons I once learned on the human error in predicting happiness.

A decade ago, I read psychologist Dan Gilbert’s book Stumbling on Happiness. I remember one tidbit he wrote about human error in predicting happiness by using examples from three things that we’re taught makes us happy: money, marriage, and kids. Gilbert mentioned that sometimes it’s the thought of envisioning of achievement to its utmost perfection (what one’s life would be like with a million dollars or what it’s like to have a wedding surrounded by loved ones…) which provides us the highest level of happiness. And those thoughts of assessing a perfect future may be so overwhelmingly and concentratedly joyful that we are left unprepared and therefore jaded by the factors which can make us sad.

The thought of Aaron Rodgers leading the Jets to glory, picturing him lifting the Lombardi Trophy amidst green and white confetti, may feel great now, but ultimately lead to disappointment. The thought of the Jets winning the Super Bowl reflects perfection of the potential…which is discrepant from reality.

Combining this perilous vice of optimism combined with the ephemeral success of any team I root for, I realized that the most fun I can have is dreaming. Soon enough, reality sets in - just like it did with the 2023 Mets.

I get out of my flashback and return to the present.

For the past six months, I had tip-toed as best I could around the Jets’ heightened expectations, but finally the buildup coalesced with the moment. I am no longer the collected, rehearsed, rational Jets fan I had conformed myself to be. Right then and there, I ask myself - Is my emotional vulnerability ready for takeoff?

The answer is yes.

I transform into a hot-blooded, emotional, in-your-face fan once again. A smack of presentism hits my face, emanates my body. I’m alive with expectations of grandeur!

My humility turns into bravado as I send several unsolicited texts to friends and family conveying my joyous disbelief, “I can’t believe this is real. Aaron Rodgers is my freakin’ QB!”

I had planted the kiss of death.

What transpired four snaps into the Aaron Rodgers era is something even the most pessimistic sports fan couldn’t prepare for. If you thought the order of events leading to this specific injury was inevitable, you’re probably less of a sports fan and more of a prophet.

Surely, this catastrophe is possible after eight games or seven games, but not four snaps.

Rodgers didn’t dupe us. The universe did.

Contrary to the way ultra-Orthodox Jews or Evangelical Christians will blame any unspeakable tragedy as the bullshit effect of mankind’s sin, Jets fans have no bullshit scapegoat. Excuses like Duane Brown’s failed block, the rain, or the turf withered out before they gained steam.

As Bill Barnwell wrote on ESPN.com, “A torn achilles tendon is an absolute freak accident.” Sound familiar, Edwin Diaz? There’s no telling signs or indications that a player can suffer one, even a 39 year old quarterback. But the fact that this occurred before he completed a single pass, I mean…..

What can I say? Not even the Mets prepared me for this.

It’s been a week since completing this article and by the time it comes out, Zach Wilson and the Jets will have played another game. Barring some even greater sign of the apocalypse, the Jets will continue out their sixteen remaining games until there are no more games to play. Life will go on and for all the hype of the past, the NFL media circus will continue with more hype of Aaron Rodgers 2.0: The Comeback in 2024.

But here in this moribund present, I’ll leave you with one final thought before moving on and letting go.

Although millions of Jets fans shared this collective writhing from Aaron Rodgers, I will always remember my personal coup de grâce of sadness.

It’s halftime and all the Jets fans at Stoney’s are stunned. We’re profusely typing on our phones - either letting our loved ones know we’re okay or scanning twitter for gallows humor memes. During the intermission, the lead admin for the local support group 5280 Jets Fans stands up in front of the emotionally-decimated room to make announcements. After he introduces himself, he says the following:

“Thank you everyone for coming out. Look at this turnout of over 60 people - this is amazing! Give yourselves a hand! We love to see this. Last year, we had around 20 people come to the games and if I remember correctly we had about 10 show up for the season opener. But this…this is amazing!”

And with the swagger of a hype man walking back and forth on stage, he bellows into the mic the most tone deaf words…. words that, if this were the South, would receive a polite “Bless his heart”

“There should be no reason why we don’t have this many people every single week for the rest of the season!!”

I looked among the sea of Jets jerseys - from McNeil to O’Brien to Pennington to Gardner. I peer through the dozens of high top tables, spanning about 60 feet from the main 95 inch broadcast. The regulars, aka those 20 die-hards who came to this bar last year for every game, were front and center. But then I peered among the unfamiliar faces, thinking to myself…. how many of these fair-weather, bandwagon, and pink hat fans would be coming back regularly to now watch Zach fuckin Wilson. How many of those fans - who were reinvigorated by Hard Knocks to follow Aaron Rodgers - will be prioritizing their Sunday for the Same Old Jets brand of football?

In the aftermath of the 5280 Jets Fans leader’s presumption of “no reason why we couldn’t have this many people every single week”, all I could do was chuckle to myself, put aside my phone, place my forehead on the table between my folded arms, thinking to myself c’mon man, the reason why people came is gone.

Oh how cruel it is to be an optimistic fan, no matter how cautious, of the J-E-T-S, JETS, JETS, JETS.