NY Jets #4 - Part 1

We are in the process of updating all previously discussed numbers up to 61. We are also revising some of the previous entries themselves, making them, we hope, more palatable. More readable. Less unreadable.

At the end of the 2008 football season, I taught with a young colleague who had relocated from a little town in Wisconsin to Philadelphia. Her newlywed husband had recently been transferred because of his job. Here she was, a quiet, Scandinavian-looking girl from one of the most polite and rural states in the union now living in what, one might argue, is one of the angriest, most aggrieved metropolitan areas in the Western Hemisphere. She seemed horrified by the casual vulgarity of the school's hallways, by the ghetto mannerisms that all her students assumed. It was angry and urban. She was at a loss.

To her, a lifelong Packers fan, Brett Favre #4 was a representation of everything that was sacred about the life she left behind. In the mess of all the anger and rage of Eagles fans around her, she cherished the times that she could talk to someone about the Packers - in one case, a 200 pound kid she taught from West Philly who wore a giant puffy Packers sideline parka. And this was going to be her first season without Brett Favre, and she couldn't quite remember the Packers without him - the Packers of Don Majkowski, Lindy Infante and Randy Wright.

When she found out I was a Jets fan, with Favre starting for us that year, she looked at me as if I were her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend. It had been a complicated breakup. She didn't want him back; after all, he had called it off in the first place and had left Green Bay earlier in the year, and then suddenly he had wanted back in when it was convenient for him. Since then, Green Bay had matured, settled down and married her younger boyfriend named Aaron who didn't seem all that much fuss over, but then who can say what's in the eye of the beholder, but love? Green Bay told Brett that she still cared for him, but things had changed, and it was time to let go. As for me (once again, in this analogy playing the new girlfriend of the old boyfriend) she expressed a hope that I'd be happy with Brett, though I could tell there was still some reluctance in her eyes about not having him around anymore. Women - even proverbial women in an uncomfortably extended metaphor - know these kinds of things about one another. She was still a little jealous.

I didn't have as much time with Brett Favre as she did, certainly not enough time to think of him as a personal icon the way Joe Namath is to me. At first, he was just Brett Favre, football legend, like other legends who made their name with another team before coming to the Jets, but I certainly knew how good he could be. And then, after the October win against the then-unbeaten Titans, with the Jets at 8-3, I forgot all the other bleak Decembers of seasons past. It was all new and alive with possibility. Only Brett Favre could have accomplished that, and like all late converts, I fell hard for the magic he so effortlessly wielded, only to be betrayed in the end. By December of that fateful season, though, my Wisconsin friend gave me a commiserating expression. The romance, such as it was, practically ended before it had begun. She could have told me I told you so. But she didn't. Oh gosh, my friend from Wisconsin seemed to say, with all of that kindhearted rural pity in her eyes. Yeah, that's Brett. Kind of lets you down in the end, doesn't he? I remember when he did the same to me. Hurts like heck, I know. But you'll get over him. I promise.

I did, of course. Now I see the whole thing as an unbelievable story. And what's never stopped bothering me is the stone cold truth that, at the end of that season, New England Patriots fans must have been laughing themselves to sleep every night. Maybe they're still laughing about it, if they ever give it so much as a second thought - especially now, as their team prepares for yet another Super Bowl.

****

It's the number worn by punters, line judges, and Lou Gehrig. Until Brett Favre came along, who knew or cared about #4? At one time, Favre himself ranked in the catalogue of What If's in our world of the Jets. Onetime Jets executive Ron Wolf had been interested in the rookie quarterback from Southern Mississippi, though as Favre himself attested, considering how wild he was in Atlanta, he would probably have been killed by the experience of living and playing in New York. The Jets would probably have dealt him away just as Atlanta did.

Brett Favre, Jet (2008)

But then he did come to us, many years later, after rewriting the history books and making himself the quintessential romantic hero of America's Game. With a single Super Bowl ring that probably should have been followed by a dynastic line of them, Favre's constant story of familial ups and downs made him a beloved figure to all. For a period of time, outside of Ronald Reagan, he was the lone American icon who could draw the devotion of peoples on both sides of the Mason-Dixon.

Did he belong with the Jets, or even the Vikings? The real question was, after the years, the records, the playoff games and various dramatics on MNF, did Brett Favre really belong anywhere other than in the mythic imagination where all of us are still young and beautiful, charismatic and new? The answer was obviously no. But like all mythical figures, Favre stoked our desire and capacity for wonder. With a seemingly confident offense, he led the team (and here I repeat) to a rare 8-3 record by Week 12. So complete was the general consensus that the Jets would win big in January (and February) that even I began to believe it. And I had been a Favre doubter from the start. Then, when the team went 1-4 the rest of the way, pulling out of the playoffs, it felt like I had awakened from a fever dream where Brett Favre was my quarterback, and he was leading us to the Super Bowl.

My single favorite Favre moment from that season came after the Jets defeated the Titans - a moment that seemed to prove the brilliance of their decision to sign him in the first place - when Eric Mangini was being interviewed afterwards on the field, and someone approached him from behind and smacked his ass with such excessive congratulatory force that the coach yelped out, angrily at first, until he realized that his assailant was his quarterback. No matter, then. Let the boy be the boy.

The team never did take to him, though. Hurt or healthy, Chad Pennington was respected by his offense. To players like Laverneus Coles and Thomas Jones, Favre was a snake-oil salesman, pretending, without much effort, to care about something as big as what our team means to us. The criticism among Jets players was that he was not a team player, but while we've thought about him as a kid out there, what we were really saying was that he was only one type of kid. He played for himself, first and foremost. Commentators, with their lilting platitudes about how lovable Favre always was, ignored his inherent selfishness. And why not? Everybody needs to believe in a ridiculously talented, self-reliant, self-assured, though flawed protagonist. Such is the character description of the American hero. But in reality, Favre was simply the kind of popular high school jock whose shenanigans, disobedience and blase attitude are often ignored by the classroom teacher because, secretly, he knows that to deny that kind of kid is to deny the potency of an archetype, of a dream.

So we released Chad Pennington and took Brett Favre. Who wouldn't have done the same? And when the magic flared brightly at 8-3, we believed in the myth. When it burned out, we remembered what we had always been told about him: that he's just a kid out there. A really, really talented kid who plays brilliantly throughout a game, but throws against everyone's better judgment across the field for an interception to lose the game.

****

My friend moved back to Wisconsin a year later because neither she nor her husband liked it in Philadelphia. It's an acquired taste. After years of being verbally abused by bartenders and waiters in New York, by cab drivers and cops, I was ready for Philly and its angry people when I first moved here. Not everybody can or should be groomed for it. But I often wondered what she thought about Brett Favre's texting scandal. My God, I could just see her thinking, and to think I used to be in love with that guy. What a loser. Did Brett Favre send pictures of his penis to women when he lived in Mississippi or played in Wisconsin? Was it just that he was happy to be finally living in Joe Namath's old playland, eager to be drawn out by a latent desire to be bad in the big, bad city? It's mildly tragic, I suppose. He could have just finished in Green Bay as he was going to, but then he would have had to have been satisfied with being merely a name, like Tennyson's Ulysses. "As thought to breathe were life," Ulysses says. "I will drink/Life to the lees..."

Still, yet another characteristic of the popular high school jock who gets away with everything is that he always goes too far, and he ends up texting an obscene image of himself to the wrong cheerleader. Then suddenly the teachers and administrators start to remember all the things he's been getting away with all this time. And with that, he goes from being the archetypal hero to being Biff Loman, an outcast, with his days of embodying a mostly phony dream gone for good.

NY Jets #2

We are in the process of updating all previously discussed numbers up to 61. We are also revising some of the previous entries themselves, making them, we hope, more palatable. More readable. Less unreadable.

Is it Mata Hari? Is it a safety?

Two is a strange number in football. You don't see it all alone on a football uniform that often. Who's the greatest #2 in football history? It certainly looks weird on the scoreboard, the way halftime at Super Bowl IX was locked at a 2-0 yawn after Fran Tarkenton landed on his own fumble on the Vikings' end of the field. A safety is signified by the ref with that odd joining of hands over the head. The defense gathers round the grounded, embarrassed offensive player, and they all put their own hands up like so, as if to influence the call. The official agrees or disagrees; if he goes along with it and makes the safety signal, he seems to be hearkening back to some vague, ancient motion, one made by men throughout the ages who've been placed in extraordinary circumstances and haven't an idea of what to do. An extraordinary moment requires an exotic symbol. (Plus, there's really is no limit to the confusion football imposes on us when a Safety can score a safety.)

But we're really here to talk about Nick Folk #2, the Jets' kicker for two seasons at our writing. After this season, he averaged 76% field goals made, which more or less matched last year's rate, though the Jets themselves attempted 14 fewer field goals this year. It was a busier year for punters.

Nick Folk, 1/8/11

Folk is often invoked as the "former Cowboy" who hit 90% of his kicks until a injury reduced his production for Dallas such that he became available to the Jets. His return from injury required a recuperation that revealed to him some of the great medical achievements of his own ancestors. As it's mentioned in the link above, in the tough old days of rudimentary heart surgery, where surgeons needed "nerves of steel," his grandparents (both surgeons) apparently performed pioneering heart procedures that were at the time quite risky and had a high mortality rate.

It made Folk wonder about the nerves needed to be a placekicker. Failure cannot be an option, but it happens all the time. There are no substitutes for the man who can kick the ball 56 yards when we need him to, as Folk did in Denver in 2009. His picture above is taken at the moment he realized that his last second field goal against Indianapolis in the January 2011 playoffs would send the Jets into the second round of the playoffs against New England.

Watch the video below. As Folk lines up for the kick, the arena is filled with the plain white noise of the crowd's anxiety. When Folk sees his kick go through the uprights, you can actually hear him make what Whitman would call his "barbaric yawp." It's a spontaneous, instinctive, guttural cry of satisfaction more than relief. It's one of my favorite Jet moments of all time, and it's a sad reminder of what a disappointment the 2011 season has been.

Just before the Christmas Eve 2012 game with the Giants, the Post predicted that Folk was looking to have a "key role" in the game, one that, according to his coach, would be a true 50-50 matchup. "It's going to be a fun game on Saturday," Folk is quoted as saying. All indications were by then that the Jets had a decent chance at a Wild Card spot if only they could just play reasonably well. I actually thought that the vaguely flagging Giants would win the game, but of course, like the old fool that I am, a Jets fan, I had no idea how outmatched they really would be. None of us knew the deep decline the Jets were in nor how much worse things would get. There would be no playoffs, no barbaric yawp. And Nick Folk would play no major role.

Yet the kicker endures; he goes on elsewhere if need be. The Jets will hold onto him for next year, or they won't. He will have to win a spot in the summer, or he won't. But in my mind, and on a pirated video, he will always be there in memory, providing the aural punctuation to a favorite moment at a much happier time in our beloved team's long, troubled history.

If you need more on the trials of the placekicker, on how all his need for precision, repetition, and consistency can still go for naught, consider the Times' graphic that suggests that Folk is "terrible." He's not even nearly terrible, though every season is a long season. Things can always get worse.

****

The 1991 season was the first in my life where I literally unplugged from football. I attribute this mostly to my own desire at the end of college to seek out something that would make me useful to someone other than myself. I thought I would make my life interesting. Of course, the waywardness and vanities of youth were probably to blame as well, but back then I was adventurous enough to believe that I would live in a different city every year of my life. At this time, I lived in a commune in St. Louis, Missouri. It was what was called a "social justice community;" I was living with three other men and four women, and each one of us worked in a social work job in a city that had been gutted by white flight, vanished industry, and crack. I traded my Fridays at college house parties where floors were sticky with stale beer for Friday nights in a candlelight circle with my roommates, talking about socialist revolution taking hold in the United States.

I went to meetings of the Socialist Workers Party and believed that even in the year of the failed coup in Moscow the United States was still ripe for economic revolution. We were told the fall of the Soviets happened because it had been corrupted by Stalinism, whereas Castro's Cuba was still the hope for the future. There were pictures of Che Guevera and Oscar Romero in our house, without the slightest concern for their various ideological contradictions. I suppose there is no razor idealism quite like the kind you find in a person between the ages of 17 and 25. At that age, you're old enough to digest complex ideas but still not in possession of a fully grown frontal lobe. I put away childish things like working for money, owning things, and, most importantly, monogamy - all of which I cherish today - in order to be a revolutionary.

Most especially, I didn't care about football anymore. I'm not even sure what happened, but it turned September, and I just wasn't watching games on Sundays. "Football's so chauvinistically exploitative and imperialist," I would say to the pretty roommate on my floor while I mixed beans over the stove. I may even have said such things at our Friday group meetings. I couldn't have really believed it, any more than I could have actually believed that a radical redistribution of wealth would appeal to the mostly conservative people of my own country. It wasn't even a gradual change, which may explain why I went back to it when things became interesting for the Jets at the end of another dim season under Bruce Coslet.

There were cracks developing in my newfound worldview. The Miami-Jets game at the very end of the season was being shown on the local NBC, and, as if awakening from a fever dream, I suddenly knew I had to watch. While my housemates were out clearing an empty lot somewhere in North St. Louis, I found a way to stay home and watch the Jets' last game of the season. Both teams were hoping to finish with a dinky Wild Card spot; the Dolphins' season had been a disappointment, while the Jets managed through their Coslet-era blandness and injury to get to 7-8. I told my unsuspecting roommates that I would work on the compost in the back yard while they went to the north side to pull out weeds, glass and brush from yet another spot of urban blight.

I don't remember much of the game; a Jets game can make you feel the same whether they win or lose, conjuring in the Jets fan all a childhood's feelings of powerlessness, anxiety, fear. And of course, the Jets blew a lead late when Dan Marino led the Dolphins to the end zone with a fourth and goal touchdown. What could possibly be more familiar? At that very instant, Marty Glickman's swan song as Jets' radio announcer was, "Folks, in all my years of broadcasting, I've never said this, but there is no way the New York Jets can come back and win this game. There is just no way it can happen." (I didn't hear him all the way in the Midwest; you can hear them on the Jets' history DVD.) And given all the things that Marty had seen in all his years with the Jets, can you really blame him? It made sense for him to say it. And yet, come back the Jets did. They tied the game with a no-huddle at under a minute to play. Placekicker Raul Allegre #2 hit a 44 yarder to send the game into overtime, and then he won it with a 30-yard field goal.

Today Raul Allegre is a Spanish language broadcaster of the NFL. Until Nick Folk, he was the most famous #2 the Jets ever had, which is galling. Like many of the Jets of the late 80's early 90's, Raul Allegre made himself originally famous with someone else, in this case with the 1986 New York Football Giants. He ended his career with the flagging Jets that season.

And what did his heroics get them? A whimpering 17-10 Wild Card Game loss to the Houston Oilers the following week. Raul Allegre's field goals against the Dolphins were the singular highlight of the Bruce Coslet era. I left the commune the following year, I gave up socialism, and the Jets gave up their briefly winning ways.

When I was in high school, there was this kid who came from one of the more upstanding families in town. His parents looked like a couple smiling at their kids in the Sears catalogue. The kids did great in school; I think there were four of them in all, and they never got in a scrap of trouble. This kid was especially courteous even to the most outlandishly unfair teachers, and he was an attendance aide, which meant that he was in charge of collecting all the attendance notices teachers left in the little hanging baskets by the classroom door.

It was a small town. Everybody knew everyone's business, or so we thought. We all returned to school one autumn, and everything had changed for him. He was different. His face was suddenly pocked with acne, pale, with piercings long before it became fashionable to have them; several of them looked like DIY jobs with safety pins. His eyes shamelessly betrayed an emptiness born of something that had shattered him. Evidently his father had been carrying on with someone else's wife, and perhaps in the spirit of everything being out in the open, the kid also discovered that his mother had been shacking up with someone else, too. What I think troubled him the most was learning at the age of 16 that his parents had actually known about one another's infidelities for a while, and they not only tolerated them but had also known of others reaching further back into the cloudy, rounded-framed, earth-toned photographs of his earlier childhood. Within a year, he was expelled for pushing over the high school library stacks like a bunch of dominoes. A year after that he was in jail for dealing angel dust.

It only takes a few hard truths to undo a daydream. Whether you're old or young, you can buy into anything that looks secure. Try to imagine what it must be like for young Jets fans unaccustomed to being the laughingstock of the NFL. Imagine how hard it is for them to be wearing their jerseys, even at home. I thought they were good. They were. But sometimes things don't work out, and things change. Actually, most of the time they don't. You'll get used to it.

It's been a long time since the Jets have looked as bad - organizationally and spiritually - as they have over the last month. It is, for lack of a better term, a disgrace. I mean, no one expects a professional football team to exude integrity; Belichick's football machine in Foxboro vibrates with a cold, analytical precision that leaves anyone who loves football feeling empty and glum. Last Sunday a delusional Fundamentalist Christian beat a probable repeat rapist at Mile High Stadium; I don't turn to football for integrity. If that's what integrity looks like, I'll take ineptitude.

But Greg McElroy's puritanical tirade about the Jets' locker room possessing a "corrupt mindset" filled with "selfishness" made me think back to my old friend from high school. I wonder where he is now. You never quite forget your first truly authentic disillusionment, your first shattered dream. Mine was January 1987, when a stupid late hit by Mark Gastineau plunged the Jets into one of the worst playoff collapses in football history (at least until the day the Oilers franchise died, after Houston gave up a 35-3 lead to Buffalo five years later). I would say to any young Jet fan left feeling lost and empty after this season that you grow a callus over it. You get used to it. Consider Didi and Gogo from Waiting for Godot:

ESTRAGON:
Fancy that. (He raises what remains of the carrot by the stub of leaf, twirls it before his eyes) Funny, the more you eat, the worse it gets.

VLADIMIR:
With me it's just the opposite.

ESTRAGON:
In other words?

VLADIMIR:
I get used to the muck as I go along.