New York Jets By The Numbers: #9

I suppose Jeff Blake could have been an effective starting quarterback for the Jets if the Jets had kept him after the 1993 season. They kept Browning Nagle but not Jeff Blake, who automatically enters into the category of What Could Have Beens, players who got their start with the Gang Green before playing in greener pasture. At some point, eventually, the phrase "the former Jet" leaves their on-air description, and they merely become a famous player whose careers with another team eclipses their once limited experience with my team. Think James Farrior, Santana Moss, John Riggins.

But Jeff Blake? Jeff Blake became a journeyman quarterback throughout the NFL after he was let go by the Jets. Bengals, Vikings, Cardinals, Eagles, Saints. Holy crap. Is it fair to even judge him? What a motley crew of teams, many of them probably proclaiming him their best choice for QB. What's funny is that when I google him today, I find Jeff Blake part of the Business Development Staff for LandAmerica, a real estate company. Check out the airbrushed photo! He's at the bottom of a page of high-powered fellow Business Development Staff (whatever that means), all women by the way. Real estate and football. Two fields of work that involve taking someone else's territory. Is there a better fit? And that ring? Yikes. It's not a Super Bowl ring, in case you're wondering.

Jay Fielder is a man whose rise to prominence came in our present era, when no one seems capable of grooming a consistently decent quarterback. Tom Brady and Peyton Manning may be two of the greatest quarterbacks in the game's history, but in the rest of the NFL continues to suffer from neurotic anxiety at the position. Should he be more mobile than throwing? Should he just hand the ball off? Should he be started young and learn the offense? Should he just take instruction through the speaker in his helmet? The Jets are no exception: Pennington? Clemens? Gosh. Does it make any difference? Dartmouth grad Jay Fiedler slipped into the Dolphins lineup because of that anxiety, made doubly confusing by the fact that no one, as yet, has even come close to filling Dan Marino's shoes. Jay Fielder was better than Serge Rosenfeld, so that helped.

By the time the Jets got him, he was a castoff from castaway Dolphins, and he went down with injury early in 2005, managing 8 completions in only 13 attempts. Jay, we hardly knew ye. However, milestones are milestones. He is the Jets first and only Jewish quarterback, and the first and only starter to be distantly related to Boston Pops conductor, the late Arthur Fiedler. There you go.




Can these two excellent SEC quarterbacks, drafted 43 years apart, be adequately distinguished? Pity the one on the right. He's not a nephew of Danny Ainge. He's got so many high expectations to carry, including one as a bionic womaniziner. Such skills can be learned, though, Erik.

What number Erik Ainge will wear? Apparently 9.

Ten, 11, 12, and 13 are taken, as are 14, 15, 16, 17. Eighteen would have been great. If there's a burden worse than being quarterback in New York, let it be the one he's already had to carry by following in the distant footsteps of Peyton Manning at Tennessee. He needs a two-digit number. I'm really starting to believe that QB's are hampered lately by single-digit numbers. There's a bad vibe from Michael Vick's #7; there's too much of a signature of Favre to #4. No one's ever been a successful quarterback in the NFL in #3 - maybe Daryle Lamonica - nor with #'s 5 or 6. Eight has yet to work in any case other that Steve Young's (certainly not in Browning Nagle's). So the only number left is 9. I can respect a Steve McNair. But since 18 is divided by 9, it still makes Ainge only half of Manning. But then we should be so lucky.

Finally, John Hall, who kicked for the Jets in the brief return to glory under Parcells. He joins the category of Jetskins, players who left the Jets for Washington: Laverneus Coles, Santana Moss, Pete Kendall, John Riggins, Verlon Biggs. He was released by the Redskins before the beginning of this season. Kickers have an incredible ability to re-emerge from obscurity, so nothing is hopeless for him, but the loyal fan in me always secretly (and shamefully) relishes the low performance of players after they leave my team willingly. When he left the Jets after 2002, Hall played only one full season. It's a spiteful way to be, but being a fan has never been a rational thing.

New York Jets By The Numbers: #8

The #8 of greatest renown among Jets fans who appreciate the absurdity of our favorite team is also the winner of the #8 Booth Lustig Award for Funny Name: Browning Nagle. Jets fans love Browning Nagle because Browning Nagle was supposed to be our future, our new tomorrow, our bright star on the other side of Ken O'Brien. Then he wasn't. He came and went through our lives with such swiftness that he has become a metaphor in our kingdom for lost promise, less euphemistically phrased as "a washout." I like to think that all such quarterbacks are brought into the starting role too soon. But his season ended with a 20-0 loss to the New Orleans Saints. The next year he was a backup to Boomer Esiason. The year after that he was gone.

Nick Lowery played for the New York Jets during their very worst years. He is one of the NFL's all-time best, and when he was with the Chiefs, he was a guarantee three points every time. He was a good choice to follow Pat Leahy, and in his last season, he was still known as the man behind Jan Stenerud and George Blanda for points. He has always been a name known for his charitable causes. However, in 1995, in the midst of a frustrating 31-28 loss to the Patriots at Foxboro, he - yes - slapped a ball boy on the sidelines whom he felt was not warming up the footballs for kicking. Apparently the ball boy - a man in this thirties ("not a Wimbledon ball boy," as Lowery said later) - got mouthy (what a surprise) with Nick and got slapped. It's an unfortunate thing that is a largely forgotten footnote in his career, but if you're going to slap a ball boy, let it be a New England Patriots ball boy. I'm just saying.

Finally, in his final season in the NFL, Tom Flick was in a Jets uniform. He was a Rose Bowl winner with the University of Washington, but he had a below average career as the man who would fill in Joe Thiesmann's shoes in Washington, D.C. or Dan Fouts' in San Diego. He had no shoes to fill in with the Jets, and his injuries ended his career. Flick's a funny name; in caps looks it looks like "Fuck" if you squint your eyes. Nevertheless, what's funny about Tom Flick is that you can pay him a $10,000 speaking fee today so that he can talk about what it takes to rebound from disappointment once your career has gone south. Is this something Jets fans really need? Someone to tell you how to rebound from failure? Shouldn't we be getting speakers' fees for talking about just that? That gives me an idea...

New York Jets By The Numbers: #7

Ben Graham, Australian, burly punter, a man willing to throw himself into a tackle when his special teams coverage fails, which it did this year quite often. No mean feat. He still has four years left on his contract, but he was benched by Mike Westhoff for the final game against Kansas City this year. Westhoff is not on the team next year, so there's hope for Ben, I suppose. We wish we could give him better reassurance; after all, he was formerly of Geeno, an Australian Rules team. You know - the other football, other than the football they play with their feet.

Here's #7 Ed Bell looking remarkably like Otis Day after he had taken a hiatus from his Knights for a brief but intense career as a pro wide receiver. This may incomprehensible for fans of other teams whose many receivers are in the Hall of Fame, but the New York Jets have a great tradition of wide receivers - Maynard, Caster, Walker, Toon, Moore, Chrebet, Coles. Some better than others, of course. Ed Bell fits somewhere among the first three mentioned there, just before Walker and contemporaneous with Maynard. He was never an All-Pro by any means, nor was his career after the Jets anything more than just five catchless games with the San Diego Chargers. He didn't even get to wear their cool Charger baby blues as they were abandoned two seasons before. I just have a memory of him scoring the team's sole touchdown against the Steel Curtain in 1975. And he looked funny - a receiver wearing #7.

Chuck Clements, ladies and gentlemen. He was Neil O'Donnell's backup in 1997, Parcells' first year. There were other backups of note that season, though, weren't there? Ray Lucas, Glenn Foley. Next year, the greatest backup of all, though - Vinny Testaverde - would step in. In the midst of it all, Chuck Clements got lost and forgotten. I think this calls for a backup QB Hall of Fame. But take a look at that face. Stare at it long enough, and he looks, well, crazy.

It's easy to forget Boomer Esiason was a #7 for us, because Boomer - an Islip, NY native originally - quarterbacked for the Jets in some of their worst years. And that's saying something. A man who lead the Bengals - another fraught franchise - to the Super Bowl was thence forced to endure playing for the Jets during the last Coslet year, the only Carroll year and the first Kotite season - and take it all like a man. That's an overall won-lost of 17-31. He was knocked out cold and was out for a while in 1994, as our photograph attests. And today no matter where you go or what you do, Boomer Esiason will always be broadcasting something from somewhere, even if you don't want him to. Sort of like Bob Trumpy. Here's the thing, though: in only three seasons, he became the Jets fourth all-time passer. What strange statistics grow from years of mediocre franchise football. He also lead the team the night that Dan Marino drove a fake spike through the hearts of Jets fans in 1994. Did we know how bad things would get from there? Oh, I think so.

Frank Reich quarterbacked with the Jets? Yes. And he never erased a 38-3 deficit for them? Ever? No, but he's Fundamentalist Christian, a world view no doubt made possible (as all conversions are) by both the highest highs and the lowest lows. The greatest comeback in NFL history with Buffalo produced a euphoric affirmation: "God is an awesome God!" Whereas playing on Kotite's 1-15 Jets squad rendered the believer prostrate, penitent and needy: "I need God to get through this." Thus does God work in mysterious ways.

Tom Tupa is an unsurprising choice for Booth Lustig Funny Name #7, but Ed Bell comes close. There's something funny about the name "Ed Bell." He was also "Eddie" Bell, but regardless it's a name you can trust - as a bookie. Anyway, we're talking about Tom Tupa, the punter. When Vinny Testaverde went down with his famed Achilles' snap in the 1999 opener against the Patriots, I was actually watching the game with a bunch of Patriots fans and old college friends. When Vinny went down they cheered it like snapping jackals at the sight of the smallest antelope fallen wounded. They may have been expressing the rage of countless years of Red Sox and Patriots underachievment, but it still hurt. This was supposed to be the Jets' year. I hope they're happy now. Where have they put all that bile?

So with no backup ready (are you listening to this?!?) Bill Parcells puts the ball into the hands of Tom Tupa, the punter. Parcells had also increased the likelihood of Testaverde's foot getting caught in the hot, new turf of the Meadowlands by earlier replacing it in favor of the grass that they had briefly used during the preseason. But anyway, no backup ready. Not Rick Mirer - not yet - and what would it have mattered? It was Rick Mirer, after all. No, he sends Tom Tupa in, and though it still amazes me as I sit here writing the very words proclaiming it - Tupa immediately throws a touchdown strike to Wayne Chrebet. I get up and begin pointing my finger at the gathering of Patriot fans and yelling (screaming, really), "YEESSSSSS!!" over and over and over again. Yes! Yes! "You motherfuckers!"

Then I left the house and have never spoken with them since. The Jets lost 30-28, but for a moment, Tom Tupa restored my faith in a God whose sense of balance was fair. It was a brief feeling.

According to the Jets all-time roster, number 7 Sherman Lewis was a promising defensive back who tore up his knee while returning a punt in 1966 and never really regained his form. He was an insurance salesman, which I think was a popular off-season occupation for a time when athletes needed to make extra money. Except that he is also the Sherman Lewis who was an offensive coordinator for the champion Packers and the lesser Lions of Steve Mariucci. I think he may have been the last of the great supporting cast of black coaches who was passed over or the top job. See the things you learn?

Behold Ben Graham in his Geeno uniform. I mean, I get that this is an outdoor game and that these guys are playing without pads, but...I mean, the shorts seem really tight. You know? Just a little too tight. Fancy-pants kind of tight. You know?

New York Jets By The Numbers: #5

Five is one of those numbers that doesn't quite fit into the world of football. It's hard to name a famous #5 on any team anywhere. The most embarrassing playoff game in NFL history was between the Cowboys and Lions in 1970, with the former winning 5-0. You get five points in football by scoring a field goal and a safety. Nobody takes the number 5 seriously, except if you're a kicker or a punter, for not only are you somehow implicated in the cumulative scoring of the points that yield 5, but it is also likely your number. You really can't get a quarterbacking job with the number five. Only Paul Hornung could get away with it, and they made him a fullback. Paul Hornung was the Golden Boy, though.

Firstly, there's Don Silvestri, punter, kickoff specialist. He was second in 1995 to Morten Andersen in touchbacks, which, in the Kotite years, translates as a notable achievement. Bring it out to the 20.

But for Jets fans, #5 is one man: Pat Leahy. It wouldn't kill to consider someone like Pat Leahy for induction to Canton, but of course, it'll never happen. Much beloved, much bemoaned, Pat is still the most prominent and important #5 the Jets have ever had. He was the Jets' top scorer for 11 consecutive seasons, and when your team can't get score in the red zone, the kicker is going to win a lot of your team's scoring titles. I've written before about his miserable misses - a missed field goal attempt in Miami that would have made the difference (rather than a 28-28 tie) and would eventually given the Jets the AFC East Title in 1981; a missed PAT against the Dolphins in 1982 that might eventually have put the AFC Championship Game at Shea, not in the Mud Bowl. See my entry "Leahy" for more on himself.

These are paltry issues, though. There should be a Hall of Fame for Placekickers to recognize the little guys that come through in the long-run, if not always in the clutch. If John Madden can finally accept the Immaculate Reception, then I can accept Pat Leahy's misses. A great field goal kicker is consistent, and Leahy's subsequent years of consistency make him a shoe-in (groan) for the Placekicker Canton. It could be said that as soon as he left the swirling winds of Shea for the more comforting confines of the artificial turf of the Meadowlands, Leahy got better and better. By the time I was in college, I knew that a Pat Leahy kick was a lock. Like most placekickers of the era, he looks more like an insurance salesman than a football player. Yet he was the Jets' MVP in 1990. We love you Pat.

But hang on. Before we shut the books on number 5, there's more. There's Brooks Bollinger! Did Chad Pennington ever worry about Brooks Bollinger? I don't think so. There were a few moments there where, amid the frustration Jets fans had in the early part of this decade with Chad's injuries that the future seemed possible with...Brooks Bollinger, the player whose name conjures more a little known film noir with Wendell Corey than it does a multi-touchdown performance. But what can you do? This is the Jets.

There's never been a Super Bowl quarterback on either side of the ball who's worn #5. There is an African-American Presidential candidate, yes, but a QB MVP with a kicker's number? Nah. But into one team's life can come more than one #5 quarterback. Just for kicks, the man of destiny might be named Brett Ratliff. Just in case he doesn't succeed where (or because) the other Brett might, he might make a second fortune by virtue of simply being himself. His name should be trademarked as a perfect exercise for actors as they enunciate each vowel and syllable and warm up their mouths. BRETT RAT-LIFF. Each time you say it, the second string quarterback of the New York Jets receives a royalty. That might make up for the inevitable quarterback hex that accompanies the number five.

And finally then there's Booth Lusteg. That's right. In German, his name means "happy" or "joyous," I think. I couldn't find him anywhere as "Lustig" as he is spelled in the NY Jets Database, and that's not the only inconsistency. He's also on the Jets All-Time roster as a kicker in 1967, whereas Lusteg himself claims he was on their roster in what would appear to be 1968, when Jim Turner had the job. It appears to have been a temporary gig. (Notice that Booth is obviously a creationist). And pick up Booth's book while you're at it. Life after football and inspirational speaking - they go together like gazelles and dinosaurs apparently do in the creationist's world.

But it strikes me that it's important to only not acknowledge players for their achievement on the field and their importance to the franchise we love, but we need also recognize those we feel made the effort to have a funny name. In the tradition of the Lombardi Trophy, we could call name our funny name award after its first recipient: for every number, there should be Booth Lusteg Award.

January 12, 1969

Why is today different from all other days?

Today is the 39th anniversary of one of the most important games in NFL history - and the most important game in Jets history. The New York Jets defeated the Baltimore Colts 16-7 in Super Bowl III, a game played under overcast conditions in Miami's Orange Bowl. It remains a moment of pure lore in the sense of its central motif, of David defeating Goliath. The game, coming ten years after the famed NFL Championship between the Giants and the Colts, set in the stone the role of football as America's game. This, my son, is why this day is most important.

Two months from being born, I was there, wondering what all the fuss was about. Mom and Dad went to Brooklyn to watch the game with my grandparents. The Yankees had dominated in baseball, the Celtics in basketball, the Canadiens in hockey. The NFL was a part of the old way, the standard in selfsame consistent fashion. Representing the NFL that year, the 1968 Baltimore Colts are still today considered, statistically speaking, one of the greatest teams to ever play football. Yet the Colts made too many mistakes that day, while the Jets played surprisingly safe, conservative football. When you watch the game from end to end (as I do; I own it, you know) you appreciate just how business-like the Jets are throughout the game. Joe Namath did not throw a single pass throughout the fourth quarter. In interviews in the early 90's about the game, this comes as a surprise to him.

In six months after Super Bowl III, American men would look out onto the Sea of Tranquility and see the vast emptiness of space, the cold colorless terrain of the Moon. They would gape at the seeming eternity of the Void which, in truth, was merely an infinitesimal section of the universe in the sky above them, contemplating the meaningless of human endeavors. Yet if a fictional creature had bounced out of the strangely sticky gray silt and asked Buzz Aldrin the name of the current champion of American football, he would - even after his stunned amazement - have been able to answer easily: "The New York Jets."

For one year, the New York Jets were the outright defending champions of the game. Then, on the other side of 1/12/69, America changed vastly, its dynamics shifting Right in politics, yet toward personal freedom both in popular culture and in sports. Super Bowl III was a portion of that transition. The Jets won the game themselves, but the event became something greater than themselves. It was all happening with and without them.

A year after Super Bowl III, the Jets would lose in the playoffs to the Chiefs, 13-6. It would be the franchise's final postseason game for another 12 years - by which time, America was barely recognizable from what it had been before Watergate, the fall of Saigon, the Hostages in Tehran, and Super Bowl III. By the time the Jets lost on a last minute interception to the Bills in the 1982 AFC Wild Card game, Joe Namath's revolution in athletic personality had become de rigeur, while the Jets were considered a consistently losing team.

Yet there is something for Jets fans to keep hold of, even now. We will always be a part of a franchise that beat the ultimate Goliath. We will always be fans of the team that to which no one ever gave a chance. We will always be fans of the team that defied the odds, and in this way, we will always carry the mantle of the underdog, as we have in nearly every playoff game in which we have ever played.

...except for the one we played on January 12, 1999, thirty years to the date of Super Bowl III. The Jets owned home field possession of a divisional playoff game, this time winning as the favored team against against Jacksonville, 34-24. I will not lie. I remember that game, and I remember how good it felt for a few moments, knowing that my team was better than most in the NFL. It would not last for long. I kind of knew it at the time. I'm a Jets fan.

Do the Cringe

In Among the Thugs, Bill Buford says that the sickness of British hooliganism is found in its allure, its intoxicating ability to numb the sense of conscience among normally sane, well-behaved people. Ten years ago, we saw civic-minded people at the Meadowlands caught hurling ice balls onto the field during a Chargers-Giants game. This year, Jets fans are engaged in their own form of cowardice, through verbally assaulting women during halftime at Gate D.


One of the things that has enabled me to stay a football fan over the years is that I have not attended an actual game in a long time. Firstly, the modern game is simply too expensive to see. Then, based on everything that I have heard from regulars at Eagles and Jets games, the experience is horrible for anyone who does not drink, and the last drink I had was four and half years ago. (Whether that was a good decision or not remains to be seen.) And frankly, being completely drunk is an enormous asset to handling the bad football, lousy weather, and really lousy behavior from creatures resembling human form.

Here in Philly, there is always a story about how Giant fans visiting Philthy (why, why?) for the division game are pelted with rocks, garbage, beer and, in keeping with behavior the primate cage at the Philadelphia Zoo, bodily excretions.

But imeciles can flower anywhere. At gate D of Giants Stadium during Jets games, subhuman, knuckle-dragging Jets fans show their true colors by drunkenly requesting of the opposite sex that they remove their shirts.

This is a generally popular request across the culture. Whilst waiting for the New Year ring anew, a collection of revelers down below us encouraged a timid-sounding member of their group to call up to someone on a nearby balcony. "Take off your top!" I heard. I do not know if the woman obliged. In time, though, the young men sounded deflated. I presume they did not get what they wanted. I guess this was the best action they were going to get all night.

But back at the game, I suspect that the idiots in Gate D balcony are not just interested in seeing women's breasts; they're men in their 20's and 30's, interested regressing back to a lost time of mischief to which they think they are entitled, a time of being a pubescent teenage boy. I teach young men that age, and the worst of them generally lack a father figure. Among adults, though, getting drunk and excited over a public spectacle of another person's humiliation is the ultimate mark of a disempowered dumb guy. "Christ, Marty," my Dad would say to me when, as a boy, I snorted over something crude, "Get your goddamned act together. When you laugh like that, you sound like a freakin' retard." That usually shut me up.

But as with the ice ball incidents in 1995 at the Meadowlands, we would probably find a lot of well-off, intelligent professionals screaming, "Show us your tits!" It could be said that deep down even the smartest, healthiest seeming man wants to act like a goonish Neanderthal. Pour cheap beer into a stupid man, and you get what you deserve. But pour beer into a quasi-intelligent man who is suddenly feeling his buzz and feeling the freedom of a brief moment without rules, and he becomes as much a member of a mob as anyone else. It doesn't take much to awaken his inner sniveling goon.

Sure, in the last game against the Chiefs, Gate D balcony was closed. But what I find appalling is that initially the stadium security was slack in dealing with the issue, and instead they insisted that women simply not expose themselves. The flashing women were arrested, not the men, because what the men were doing was technically free speech. It's the way Catholic schools deal with sex - women bad, men randy - but what can you do? Boys will be boys. Apparently yelling, "Show us your rack!" is not the same as yelling, "Fire!"

There were women who obliged, perhaps even happily. It always amazes me how women are their own worst enemies. I'll bet a lot of these women probably don't even think football is very interesting, anyway. They're just there to make their own Neanderthals happy. I feel bad for women who actually do love football (and go to see the Jets play badly) yet find themselves unwittingly on the Gate D balcony. Which is why I will never go to a pro football game with my wife. Ever. We're fine reading the paper on Sunday and watching games on the set. It is ridiculous to even consider a Jets game worth such hassle right now, anyway. Could this season have been worse?