Joy

Once upon a time, I remember sweating out a game, 17-14 - the Jets beat the defending champion LA Raiders, the team that people said they couldn't beat in the strange and twisted playoff structure of a strike season. I remember sitting on the floor, waiting, watching, hoping. Please, I just kept saying. Please hold onto the lead and win. And they did win. I felt euphoric, weightless, like I was going to lose my mind.

And that's pretty much how I feel right now, 27 years later. The Chargers killed themselves, but the Jets won the game.

In the midst of Haiti's agony, nothing done on the football field can possibly compensate for the troubles of the world - I grant this and I acknowledge it. But to the degree that it can supply a lasting happiness to a single individual, I admit its power. This will give me the energy to do my job just a little bit better. So long as I live, this January will be - just as January 1999 was - a magical time.




Unless the Jets lose by a field goal to the Colts. I don't think I could bear that.

Jets/Chargers - 1/17/10

At the end of three-quarters of what should be the year's best weekend of football, the home teams have outscored the visitors, 99-20. This might mean that the Jets will lose 34-7. More likely, it will be a close game that will break my heart. The Chargers have won 11 games in a row. Plenty of people have told me that on any given Sunday, the Jets can beat any of the remaining teams this year. Thank you, thank you. This is very kind. But this is also not true.

Given the dumb things I thought as this great season began, I cannot count this season as anything other than a success. A second round appearance in the playoffs is not what I thought our team was capable of doing, backing in or not. But I am ready for the same experience as the second round AFC Divisional Playoffs back in Januarys of '03 and '05. The former was an outright loss of 30-10 to the last of great Raiders teams, with Bill Romanowski, fully juiced up, decrying the Jets' blowout of Peyton Manning the week before. He mocked them. He was speaking the truth, though he a pernicious liar by nature. The awful, awful, awful, godawful 2005 loss to the 15-1 Steelers, 20-17 would have been a victory had Doug Brien made two field goals that clearly were shanked by the stress of the moment. If Jay Feely's not going to make the crucial field goal to win, I will take the blowout. I will take it like the Jets fan I am.

The Jets elect to kick. Deep, deep breath. Here we go.

The Bright Side of Things, Really

Well, it's time to update, isn't it? Whatever any of our expectations were of this season, a second round appearance in the playoffs is the very outside edge of my own definition of success. I love that we "backed" into the playoffs. Let freedom ring. I love that Rex Ryan swings into bipolar moods of euphoria and ponderous disappointment. I am glad that I am forced to feel shame and self-criticism every time Shonn Greene plays to his potential and well beyond my recent criticism of him as a washout. I was wrong in every way. God Bless My Stupidity.

And while we're at it, let's take a moment to praise the New York Jets for drafting well over the past five years, something that I don't think the franchise has ever done over such a span: David Harris, D'Brickashaw Ferguson, Kerry Rhodes, Nick Mangold, Brad Smith, Leon Washington, Drew Coleman, Dustin Keller, Dwight Lowery, and of course, Darrelle Revis. Oh, and Mark Sanchez. And Shonn Greene, provided that neither man is responsible for more than two turnovers each in San Diego on Sunday evening.

Listen to me. There I go again.

And while we're at it, I want to thank everyone who made this possible. I don't think we have a chance this weekend. Our last outing here last year was disastrous. But I have to go to bed. It;s going to be a long weekend.

12 Things I Know Are True (UPDATED)

• Calvin Pace’s advertisement encouraging people to get tested for HIV is obviously not intended as an encouragement to get tested for drugs specializing in performance-enhancement. True. However, he has seven sacks in fewer games than his cohorts, yet leads the team. Pass it around, Calvin.
  

• Vernon Gholsten (remember him?) is a man with a gigantic, heat-inducing magnifying glass above him, held by an equally gigantic kid with a boredom problem, who basically represents… Well, me, maybe. I don’t know. True. No sacks, no interceptions.
  

• Mark Sanchez has managed to appear dumb before even coming to New York. Why must he try to act like Tom Brady before taking a snap? Why must the Mets wear black to look like the Yankees? A pointlessly silly comment. He's given us a fun year. Everybody went on about his poise and then went on about going on about his poise. I don't need to discuss. The Mets, with Jason Bay, and without a starter to support Johan Santana, have only a long-delayed decision to go with the old throwbacks next year. Although apparently they will still wear black. Why? Isn't black too hot to wear in the sun?
  

• Mark Sanchez will start opening day?? Really?? Somebody call Browning Nagle and ask him how his career went as a rookie starter. I know, I know. Matt Ryan. Joe Flacco. Keep intoning. Breathe. Repeat. Ignore the statements about sophomore slumps. Both Matty Ice and Flacco have had statistically good years, even if their teams are underachieving. Remarkably, I have hope for Sanchez. With 12 TD's to his 20 INT's (and counting!) he really is on pace to become the next Joe Namath.
  

• Rex Ryan has changed the “culture” at Hofstra – er, Florham Park – er, Cortland. He is apparently OK with players making mistakes. He smiles more than Eric Mangini, but then I do, too, and I suffer from depression. The question is, what will activate the Ryan gene for inexplicable behavior? Yeah, but Rex Ryan weeps!! Did his Dad ever do that, in front of his team?
  

• The Jets will lose their first six games of the regular season. This will bring the culture back to normal. Lies. They won the first three games, a brief spat of winning that brought sunshine through my barren soul. The culture remains intact because they lost the next three after that, stand at the final week 8-7, poised for an improbable playoff spot and what will likely be a loss at home for their last game at the Meadowlands. Fair is fair.
  

• Real, imagined, fictional, absolutely true, player, entourage – in any event, rape against women surrounds the real culture of American football. True, I guess. Although we heard less about it this season. It didn't mean it didn't happen. A player seems to die every year in a needless act of violence, too. And at least everybody's topic was head injuries.
  

• Plaxico Burress will not sign with the Jets because he’s probably going to serve as much time as Michael Vick (but possibly more than Donte Stallworth?) Sure, whatever. But who would have guessed that Michael Vick would become mundane? The key is the phrase, "only in Philadelphia." A friend of mine came back for a visit after 15 years, and he immediately picked up on the general air of hostility that pervades the City of Brotherly Love. Is Mike Vick a better person. The Philadelphian's answer: "Oy dannow. Down eesk may. What you looking at may faw? That's got no nuthin' ta dow wit may."
  

• Thomas Jones and Leon Washington are both a little hurt, feelings-wise. But Shonn Greene is going to be a better pick than Mark Sanchez. (I know, I know. They play different positions.) No. Leon Washington is a little hurt because he shattered his leg. Thomas Jones should be hurt because he's not in the Pro Bowl. Shonn Greene is a little hurt because he hasn't quite lived up to all our expectations.
  

• But, more importantly, will Danny Woodhead still play for us this season? What a movie that would make. YES!! Danny Woodhead: #83. 131 total yards. The pride of Chadron State, Nebraska.
  

• Kellen Clemens will start for us? Really? Really?? No.
  

• Nobody is reading this right now. True.
  

Last Night

It has been so long since I last posted. I know where I am in this world enough to know that creating anything will get you nowhere except further along in your creativity, which is something, at least. Sometimes that doesn't seem enough, though. Sometimes you look in other places, and what you discover is that the person you want to be is staring back in the mirror wondering what needs to be done that day. Strange how it doesn't make you any happier with yourself. But there you are. Now get on with it.

You are a Jets fan, after all.

Last night, I watched the Bears-Vikings on MNF, nurturing a an unsurprising grudge. This game represented what I hoped would be a culmination of feelings bottled up all year. These are feelings that many similarly self-respecting people have been quietly sharing for some time, I would imagine. Nurtured within these is a deep desire to see Brett Favre crash and burn the way he did last year. I try not to act like a petty man, but I am one by nature. I like to see bad behavior punished, no matter how long it takes. Like so many people, for one reason or another, I have come to genuinely dislike this singularly narcissistic, selfish, and talented man. He abandoned me, Paramus, Massapequa and Massapequa Park the way he once abandoned the entire state of Wisconsin, and now I feel that one thing that might still unite this nation of deluded religious fundamentalists and featherheads would be to share a mutual desire to see this one man punished in the manner of the ancient Greeks.

And thus it seemed possible. For three quarters, he seemed befuddled, rushed, hurried, even confused. He had undermined his coach earlier in the week, and with that his team, just as usual. He wasn't the incompetent, bored jackass of last year, but a 23-6 deficit to the Bears sufficed. The score drew closer, though. So I watched the whole game. I can't remember the last time I watched an entire Monday night game. You try doing it and teaching tenth graders at 7:45 am Tuesday morning.

Then there was that drive that ate up what seemed like five minutes toward the end of the fourth quarter and drew the tie with an absolutely brilliant pass to Sidney Rice. My heart sank because I was obviously witnessing what makes this self-centered man special to begin with. He is not like you and me. Obviously I felt renewed and overjoyed when Cutler won the game with a touchdown pass, but the possibility of losing a bye to the Eagles was not enough. I want to see the man crushed. I want his spirit broken the way he broke ours. The work is not yet accomplished. But I feel in my heart it will be.

That night, I dreamt that I had a boil on my face the size of a golf ball. I was about to teach class, but Brett Favre, in a Brooks Brothers suit, stepped forward and walked into my principal's office and insisted, without acknowledging me at all, "That Roche can't teach today in that condition!" Damn you, man! I will have my revenge!

New York Jets #41 - Part 3

Well, this got complicated, but it's about to get simpler. We finish the number 41 with the 1998 appearance of Keith Byars in #41 for the Jets. This is a man who, missing nearly a full season at Ohio State, still managed to be near the top of their rushing categories all time. If I were a fanatical Buckeye fan - and God only knows what universal stratagem prevented that from happening - I would drop an excess amount of money in my insomniac moments over the Internets on a Keith Byars jersey. He was a monster. Watch this return of a punt in the 1984 Fiesta Bowl against Pittsburgh, and you see what I mean. Look for his teammate, Pepper Johnson among the human Buckeye pile in the end zone.

Then there's this little gem from sometime in 1990, I think. Keith Byars was playing for the Philadelphia Eagles, and had been since 1986. The game is Giants-Iggles on the hard, cold concrete surface of Veterans Stadium in Philly. On a Randall Cunningham QB breakaway, Keith Byars lays a block on his former teammate Pepper Johnson that is so terrifying that Pepper looks as though his body is reacting to the shockwave of an explosion. He literally goes horizontal in midair. Textbook Buddyball, and yes, that is Rich Kotite supervising the activities of the Eagles' offense on the sideline. Pepper Johnson probably feels Byars' block on him even to this day as he rolls out of bed in the morning.

Keith Byars, ball, midair

Jump ahead some eight years, and Keith and Pepper are now teammates on the Jets. It is the AFC Championship Game, January 1999. I offer some of his little bits of brilliance above because it's Keith Byars' fumble late in the first half, deep in Denver territory, that still recurs in my nightmares. In some sense it turned the game around, though the Jets still lead at the half. It's hardly fair to point this out, but it took the wind out of the Jets' timid sail. It's also not a good parting memory for a man who played hard and well for so many years, but as Jet, Keith Byars remains in my mind as you see him here - fixed in midair, playing in the last game of his career, suddenly conscious of the fact something has gone terribly wrong. We all felt the same way that day, Keith. I often feel that way in general. I am a Jets fan. And he was not alone in blundering; this was one of six Jet turnovers in the Title Game. Curtis Martin fumbled on the Denver 44 later on. It was the last game of Pepper Johnson's career, too.

Keith Byars' fumble is the snapshot in my mind that acts as the bookend to an embryonic schema, my first nurturing sensation from the football world, which is #41 Matt Snell's touchdown in Super Bowl III. They are exactly 30 years and one week apart from one another. The Jets have yet to get that far since January 1999. When will the next snapshot come?

NY Jets #42 - Part 3

I was in Memphis, visiting my parents when I saw the news that Ronnie Lott #42 was joining the New York Jets. This would be summer of 1993, after my horrific first year of graduate school that saw at least one major anxiety attack and certainly one nervous breakdown. Some things just look like good decisions from the start, and even though most of my professors thought I was wholly unprepared to do what I was trying to do, I was deluded into thinking they were wrong. I'm not sure that has anything to do with Ronnie Lott, but I was similarly deluded into thinking that when we signed Lott, Leonard Marshall and Art Monk, the Jets were trying to so something that other people thought they couldn't do, like make the playoffs.

And it didn't work out. Neither did grad school, though I got my degree, so technically it worked out. The Jets? Not so much. Instead of being like the 1990 San Francisco 49ers, the Jets ended up looking more like the 1962 New York Mets, gathering future Hall of Famers - and NFL All-Time Team members, I think - like Monk and Lott at the tail end of their efficacy. As I recall, upon being signed, Lott said something to the effect that he hoped other talented players would take the offers of free agency cash that the Jets were handing out back then. I was always liked Ronnie Lott. Maybe he thought the Jets would make the playoffs in 1993. But younger, talented players demurred his suggestion. He pulled an average year in 1993 and started 15 games in 1994, a legendary season among Jets' collapses. Duke Snider is in the Hall of Fame as a Dodger, Richie Ashburn as a Phillie, neither of them as a Met, despite their sporadic appearances in the 1962 lineup. Lott is in the Hall as a Niner. Monk is in as a Redskin.

****

There was once a time when the Times allowed you to read any of their articles online for free so long as you were a member. Obviously those days are over, and I half convinced myself that a downloading binge I went on two years ago was responsible. "There's an idiot in Philadelphia who's pulling up every article on the New York Jets' seasons in the 1970's, and we're not seeing anything in return!" Obviously that's not the case, but I'm a serious person. When I was 13 and apparently friendless, or at least certainly without the possibility of anything resembling a girlfriend, I spent most of my time in my high school library trolling through spool after spool of Time magazine microfilm, reading back issues going back at least 20 years. It was as if I had returned to consciousness after a two-decades long coma, trying to find out about all I had missed. More likely I was what I was - a baffled child in the Reagan years of nationalist sleepwalking when all the country seemed nettled by the cultural revolutions of its recent past but insisted on going on acting as if they had never happened. I'm not sure Time really helped clarify all that, but, again, I was 13. And there was no Interwebs.

Anyway, I just paid the New York Times $4.50 to double-check some information on Cliff McClain #42, Jets' running back from 1970-73. Maybe it's an extravagance when for the same amount of money I can buy myself an afternoon's on-street parking in Center City Philadelphia, sure, but bear with me. What I'm about to share with you might have changed the course of professional football history.

Cliff McClain had a fairly ordinary football career; at the risk of offending the subject himself, one might even go so far as to say his career was not particularly successful and that he probably saw little play time. He gained around 400 yards over four seasons, and he retired a Jet.

On November 19, 1972, the Jets traveled to the Orange Bowl to play the undefeated Miami Dolphins. By this time the Jets were 6-3 while the Dolphins needed only one more win to clinch the AFC East. The Jets had been a split-personality team in 1972 - a "jittery" one, as Sports Illustrated called them. The truth is that they were almost a good team, certainly not a great one, playing what most people believe (not me) was the greatest team of them all. And by the start of the fourth quarter, the Jets were winning, 24-21. One of the hallmarks of the Dolphins that season is that when they went down, they always came back, and they did come back and win that game, 28-24, clinching it on a Mercury Morris touchdown. No surprise.

No surprise either also that the Morris touchdown was enabled by a Jets turnover in Miami territory, in this case, on what is reported to be a muffed handoff between Namath and Cliff McClain with the Jets ahead. We are free to place blame all around if we like. I'm sure there are ways of finding out what happened, but it's true that this particular turnover midway through the fourth was what sent the Jets to the showers. Instead of placing blame, let us suggest instead that Cliff McClain was simply witness to a piece of history, a crucial turning point. The Dolphins would win every game handily after that one and then saunter into the playoffs. The Jets were their last real challenge of the regular season.

Imagine if the handoff had actually gone well and then a variety reasonably fortunate circumstances lead to an ever more remote Jets score - let's say, even, another Namath touchdown pass, maybe to Rich Caster or Don Maynard. Yes, the idea of this is unlikely, but work with me. History is filled with options and possibilities that, reason tells us, could have happened. A touchdown later in the game would have meant that the Dolphins would have had to have mounted an even greater comeback, which, in all likelihood, they would have had to make in order to win. According to what I know, there was enough time. But imagine of they didn't.

The possibility is remote, I grant you. The Dolphins third touchdown earlier in the game is indicative of how remote it is. This was scored by Earl Morrall, on a 31-yard bootleg. Try to understand that Morrall was 38 years old by that point, which means he was older than the number of yards he scampered on the play and that everyone, including Earl, was absolutely slackjawed at how much room he had been given to lumber. If Earl Morrall could find that kind of hole, how much more would the Jets have given up to a rallying Miami offense late in the game? Again, I grant you.

But consider the possibility of Cliff McClain not fumbling and you entertain, down one circuitous route of conjecture after another, that the Jets might have held on to win at the Orange Bowl, that the 1972 Miami Dolphins would be regarded as great but probably second to the 1985 Chicago Bears (whom I feel reign supreme) as the greatest football team ever, and would never have held the one record that has been most elusive to the Patriots and the Colts in our era, that of complete perfection, from September to the Super Bowl. The mind reels. Just as in igh school, my mind evidently has nothing better to do.