Are They Serious?

I'm at a loss here. Who broke the NFL rules? Who operates above the rules while appearing to embody the best characteristics of NFL coaching on "60 Minutes?" Is it necessary to posit Mangini as an equal villain in Belichick's unethical mess because it makes the drama more Shakespearean? The New England coach got what he plainly deserved. In a competitive business, what exactly does Mangini owe Belicheck? Nothing now. Does it matter that other coaches object to Mangini's actions? Not at all. Would they not have done the same had they the same background with Belichick that Mangini has? You better believe they would have.

But Selena Roberts of the Times actually suggests that Mangini is the Judas here. The New York Jets cannot win the battle of New York even when they are in the ethical right. The Times story accompanying Pennington's return this weekend was a footnote to their story of whoever it was replacing Sam Roberts in the secondary for the Giants. Business as usual, I guess.

Shades of the Darkness

So after all the fuss over whether or not the fans were cheering Chad Pennington's injury, the real scandal was underneath their scornful eyes the whole time. Belichikgate. What kind of fan would I be if I didn't feast on the slightly wounded, otherwise freakishly good killing machine that is the New England Patriots? In truth, the killing machine is only vaguely stunned. Nevertheless, I will muster some righteous, if not rambling indignation.

Bill Belichick, ladies and gentlemen. Schmuck. A graceless, paranoid, shabby little man. We all know that even without videotaping the defensive signals of "an opponent" (HELLO?! How come every article I read about this refers to the Jets as "an opponent?" Isn't J-E-T-S easier to spell??) the New England Patriots would still be able to beat most of the teams in the AFC. But the crucial question is whether or not Belichick feels the same way. It's his team, isn't it? Wherefore the confusion? If you have the best team in the NFL, then why the need to cheat?

The answer might be partially found in New England itself. My ex-friends who live there provide evidence of the strange and infectious mindset of the world the Puritans once called home. I still don't really think New Englanders (read: Bostonians) really know what to do with the Red Sox since they won the World Series. This is the area of America that had the greatest squad in any sports with the Boston Celtics of the 60's and 70's, yet it couldn't muster the decency to make Bill Russell - the greatest basketball player of the era - feel even slightly welcome. My own in-laws from Boston acted like my wife was too uppity when she accepted a scholarship to go Barnard rather do a co-op than Northeastern. This is an area of the world that subconsciously wants the ball to go through Bill Buckner's legs - a place that doesn't want success unless it's complicated by a simultaneous misery, like an annoying ringing in the ear that won't go away.

At last...a scandal worthy of the comparison to Watergate! OK, fine, but there is a little of Richard Nixon in Bill Belichick. Nixon didn't need to bug the Democratic Headquarters, just as Belichick didn't need to violate NFL policy and steal the Jets' signs. (I promise; I'm not just loving the analogy because the Jets are the underachieving McGovernites). The temptation to cheat probably became too intense when the ringing in Belichick's ear probably became too impossible for him to ignore. No level of greatness is enough; how could it be? There are enemies everywhere. Cheating's the only way to guarantee that they will consider him a real success.

There are several informal coaching schools throughout the game. There's the Walsh school, the Gibbs school, the Noll school. Belichick learned through Bill Parcells, and although cheating was probably beneath the Tuna's gargantuan ego, there is a well-known darkness about the old teacher that I'm sure he engendered in the pupil. I remember scenes of Parcells as Jets coach haranguing Belichick about his defensive coordinator calls right in the middle of the game. His insistent, nasty remarks at Belichick - even snippets of them - were insulting, really. I've never seen another head coach do that to his assistants with as much venom as Parcells did. Perhaps that insistent ringing in Belichick's ear is the lingering voice of Parcells himself - a man who insulted his first wife's intelligence on 60 Minutes while he was still married to her.

So no wonder Eric Mangini is a little weird. His characteristic secretiveness stems probably from a similarly regenerated darkness within Bill Belichick, the mentor who shook our coach's hand is if it were a slab of raw chicken. Let's hope the darkness doesn't catch up with Mangini, at least no more than is already evidenced by his obsessive silence with the normally curious press about his player's injuries.

Did They? Are They?

Stop.

First of all, it's easy to blame New York Jets fans for what prognosticators not in attendance at the Pats game conveniently decided was a cheering of Chad Pennington's injury. I've always taken heart from the fact that Keith Olbermann has been able to rightly label Bill O'Reilly or Ann Coulter as "The Worst Person in America," but the device is not converting well over to the halftime at NBC's Hockey Night in Canada.

From checking with fans who were at the game, the consensus is unclear. Yes, some cheered when Chad limped off and Kellen blessed himself and went on. Some cheered Chad's grit - a character trait that we have come to admire about him, even though some of us (not yours truly) think that he's not up to the task. My main question is, did anyone cheer him when he was down? To me that's the conclusive evidence of craven behavior. When Michael Irvan was injured badly for good in Philadelphia, the fans at the Vet cheered loudly. That was the gold standard for shit behavior, or just Philly fans doing their thing.

So what happened? Suddenly Jets fans have to defend their integrity. Tony Kornhiser says it was a classless gesture. Steve Young said New York's the toughest market and anyone who plays there needs to know that this kind of thing can happen. Nice guys finish last. Tom Rock of Newsday says the whole thing is a tempest in a teapot and that no one there can conclusively say that the entire Meadowlands was cheering for one thing, sort of like the noise of Dylan fans in 1966 at Manchester.

"Judas!"

This is, eventually, crap. We are all wasting valuable time wondering whether or not 78,000 people all felt the same thing. Actually, now that I think of it, there was one thing that many, many Jets fans in attendance felt when they saw it happen. Too many felt, "Holy God, not again." Full stop. It's called trauma. What came out of them after that was subject to how much alcohol they had consumed in the tailgate, what kind of relationships they had with their parents growing up, how often they were bullied in school, and what kind of sex life they are currently enjoying at home. It's a fan's life, after all.

But for you boo birds who think that we need a new quarterback any way possible, I can only say that you are like cheap floozies who think that the next well-meaning guy who comes along is going to get you out of the trailer park. I'm glad Chad Pennington went back out and scored. I yelled and shouted and cried out in joy the way I cheered when Tom Tupa threw a touchdown after Vinny Testaverde went down against the Pats at home at the 1999 opener. It was a bellowing of traumatic anguish, sort of like James Cagney in White Heat:

"Look, Ma! Top of the World!!"

BOOOOOMMM!!

The Agony and the Agony

Regular season is back. Now my life can return back to normal. I don't need to supplement the wonder and love of professional football with lame things like the Tour De France or the NBA Finals. Baseball is more engaging - with many competitive teams this year. But football is its own animal, a game of inches more than heartbreak. You don't lose because you were unlucky this time around. You lose because you weren't good enough.

And now having said that, football leaves me with that familiar sinking feeling. My team loses 38-14 to an obviously superior New England Patriots club. Randy Moss was great, Tom Brady was amazing, they scored the longest TD in NFL history, Chad Pennington was brave but hobbling, Kellen Clemens was beguiled, Thomas Jones was neutralized. I hate myself, I hate my life. I want to die.

How much do I hate the New England Patriots? I don't talk to my in-laws anymore. During the last game of the 1997 season, while the Jets' loss to the Lions put the Pats in the playoffs, I sat with my in-laws from Boston; they screeched with glee, watching Barry Sanders finish off the Jets' season. They were just a little too happy - a little too happy to watch me suffer. OK, I'd be lying if I told you that the Lions' game was the only reason why we don't talk to them. I don't miss them, though. They were our guests, and they didn't respect that I loved the Jets. They taunted me, and I had bought those drunks a lot of scotch.

There was the opener against New England in 1999, when another Jet QB's foot planted into the hot Meadowlands turf and didn't let go. That was even more traumatic. I was at a reunion with former college friends, all of whom were Patriots fans. I should have known. When Vinny Testaverde went down with a season-ending Achilles' tendon fissure, they got up on their feet and laughed and sang like undernourished jackals who had decided that one of their own would make as nice a meal as anything they could have caught on their own hungry paws that night.

In that moment, I could see a primordial gleam in their eyes. Despite the fact that we must have spoken every day like family back in college, I could see that they really hated me for what I was, a Jets fan. They witnessed my pain and horror and laughed. So I walked out, leaving those bastards behind, and I have not spoken to them since. There's family, and then there's the Jets. At least the latter are more consistent, albeit not always to my pleasure. Still...there was no other way.

Today, the Patriots were the Jets' guests at Giants Stadium, and they manhandled us; we are the lesser team, they the prodigies. Their offense was literally unstoppable; ours was occasionally clever. When Coles made his nifty catch for the first quarter touchdown and made it 7-7, Belichik looked briefly worried at how methodical the Jets offense had been. But it was a passing moment. Pennington hobbled off. Yet even able and well, he never seemed up to the task of beating a team that seems to be surprising even itself with how good it is.

Here's why they won, though. Yes, yes, I know: we couldn't control their running game; they controlled the clock; Mangenius was out-geniused; Moss was amazing. Blah, blah, blah. But all week I was saying, "If Brady blows out his knee or snaps his Achilles', we win the game, we win the division." Back in 1999, the Patriots had no Super Bowl rings; we had one. My ex-friends sneered at Vinny's vanquished dream like disadvantaged children with nothing to lose, knowing that they weren't going anywhere either. In wishing ill will on Brady, I have sunk beneath those disadvantaged voices speaking out of crude despair.

Somewhere the jackals are still laughing, and I walk away, grumbling, irrational to the point of institutionalization. So, yes, life has returned to normal after all.

New York Jets By The Numbers: #3

As of September 2008, #3 Jay Feely has been the Jets placekicker, in for the injured Mike Nugent. He was the fearless kicker who stared down the haters after he missed three crucial kicks for the Jints against Seattle in 2005 by using satire and, unfortunately, Dane Cook on Saturday Night Live. A mere written summary of the SNL sketch seems even more painfully unfunny than it probably was. I remember hearing somewhere that in the midst of his turbulent tenure with the Giants, Feely spoke of someday running for office. But can you name an NFL kicker who's actually been elected to political office? Name me a good Giant kicker, and I will show you a Jets kicker in waiting, Raul Allegre. I will show you fear in a handful of dust. There's no political career in that. There's never even been a Jet in Washington, minus the Jetskins, but that's an entirely different issue.

But I would strongly urge Jay Feely to consider a different day job after his mixed career in placekicking. There's his appearance on Sean Hannity's show; then there's his unsurprising Tweet on Chris Henry's death, which, to be fair he apologized for later. Still, the first Tweet is the truest, which is exactly why Twitter is fascinating and why I will also never have a Twitter account. Still, the Hannity appearance and the Tweet (am I supposed to capitalize that, by he way?) shows a consistency of mind found among a very particular kind of conservative that you meet from time to time - a person who 1) uses every possible moment to invoke what they perceive to be the "culture wars" concerning the lapsed values of irresponsible (often black) people and 2) makes an unconscious (and that's being generous) irresponsible joke which he then takes back, often citing the politically incorrect sensibilities of "sensitive" people. I'll be glad when Jay Feely no longer wears a Jet uniform. UPDATE: 3/10 - GONE.

Boston College grad Tom O’Connor crossed a picket line of angry Jets during the 1987 strike to take someone else's spot, punting for three games. Duane Carrell punted for the '76 and '77 squads. Each man probably played for a team of equal caliber. Each wore, for however long, the #3. The magic number. Yes it is. According to the Jets website, Duane hit a 72 yard punt in 1976 against San Francisco - a 17-6 loss, by the way. At that time, his punt was the third longest in Jets history. Remember the Jets have the longest in NFL history, but that comes many numbers from now.

While we were sitting there watching the Niners game on TV from Candlestick, Dad was making various sounds of displeasure, using the Jets weak offense as the foundation for what would prove to be a cleverly crafted argument in favor of abandoning his season tickets, and with it, the Jets. Had I been more aware of his secret agenda, I might have used Duane Carrell's 72 yard punt as counter-evidence. But then who uses a punt as evidence of anything other than whether or not his team has a good punter?

Bobby Howfield was the first soccer-style kicker the Jets ever had. I once had a drunken discussion in a bar with a guy who claimed that "Bobby Howafeld" hastened the end of the AFL by jumping from the Buffalo Bills to the New York Giants in 1965. He meant Pete Gogolak, a much more famous #3. I tried to straighten out not only his information about the identity of the kickers but also the pronunciation of the actual Jet in question. Bobby Howfield was a footie player from England, not a Jewish-American walk-on from Syosset. However, I don't think I was sober enough to even try clearing that up, so I just nodded my head. Back in the 1970's, if you were born in Hungary like Gogolak or from Bristol like Howfield, football fans only knew one thing: ya fuckin kick weed.

Finally, the Phenom #3, Rick Mirer. His greatest moment would be his curse - being put on the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1990 as Notre Dame's "Golden Boy." Bill Parcells' initial interest in Mirer when he coached New England lead him to obtain him in 1999 with the Jets. By that time, Rick Mirer had already flagged as a starter with Seattle and as a backup in Chicago and Green Bay. Parcells didn't have an adequate backup ready, but he called Mirer up when Vinny Testaverde went down in the wrenching Achilles heel injury in the 1999 opener against the Patriots. Mirer threw five touchdowns and nine interceptions in eight games that year; that's why when you think 1999, you think Ray Lucas at QB, not Rick Mirer. We were so desperate to believe that '99 was The Year that when we lost Vinny, we briefly believed in the Phenom ourselves. This is the kind of story a Jets fan loves, for it is yet another metaphor for our faith in a team that makes you hope well beyond hope's boundaries.

New York Jets By The Numbers: #1

This is the first entry which I suppose we could call "JBTN" were I not so self-conscious about appearing to rip off MBTN - Mets By The Number, the website that I am ripping off with this idea. But, anyway. It's a history of the Jets by the numbers, an arguably greater challenge than it is in baseball because football squads are larger and change so much. We begin with the loneliest number that you'll ever do.

First, a familiar face. Before he worked as a broadcaster for "American Gladiators," before he was a "correspondent" for NFL on NBC, Mike Adamle was a running back for the Jets from 1973-74. Adamle's career there is distinct only for being a prettier player than Joe Namath himself. I mean, look at that thick head of hair. And he wore #1 - a running back. I know. Obviously a pretty boy.

The current #1 is Mike Nugent, the coveted kicking draft choice from Ohio State whose field goal beat the Eagles in exhibition. He may be the first kicker the Jets have had in a long, long time who fills us with confidence. Now if Chad could just throw over the middle more often. But whatever.

My records may be a little limited here, and as always, I'm working with the nearly 1,000 names on the on the all-time roster of the official New York Jets web site. There's also Matt Turk, who punted for the Jets during the strange, beautiful and rending 2002 season. The only other intriguing #1 was Dave Jacobs, a Syracuse University grad who actually had a single moment in the sun in late 1979 - or more truthfully, his moment in the dark cold night of the home closer against New England. Back then, the drama of every Jets touchdown was only multiplied by the drama of the point after. For great kickers like Nick Lowery (a sometime Jet in the 90's), Morten Anderson, and David Akers, PAT's are an opportunity for the TV viewer to run to the can for a quick leak without worrying whether or not he's hexing his kicker by doing so. Not so for us.

During the late 70's and early 80's, I believed I could accidentally hex Pat Leahy by breathing, so I didn't breathe during the five seconds (I hoped) leading up to his point afters. For some strange reason during the 1979 season, Leahy was catching passes in practice, and Burgess Owens accidentally injured him in a tackle (I always wondered if that's what got Owens on the Jets' shit list; he jumped to the mighty Raiders the following year). I suppose Burgess was instinctively doing his job; that being said, my God, what the fuck? No kicker could be blamed for the 14-12 loss at home (and the two missed PAT's) to the Bills that season because the center and snapper Joe Fields was injured in the game. Overall, the Jets used four kickers in 1979. Courtesy of the Times' photographer Vic DeLucia, we have evidence of one of those four kickers during the 1979 season, #1 Dave Jacobs, in a heroic moment. He helped beat New England 27-26 with two kicks, one of them the game winner. Best of all, he knocked the Patriots right out of the playoffs, which if you do anywhere anytime actually gets you an automatic free pass to Gang Green Heaven. Who needs martyrdom when you can just end the Pats' season? J.E.T.S., baby.

Jacobs was not in the lineup the following year, but for one brief shining moment, the Loneliest Number must have made everybody think that he would be there again. That's a Jets story for you. Gone but not forgotten.

Jetskins We Have Known

Before and After:












Harry Frazee sold his best Red Sox players to the Yankees, most especially a rotund extrovert who was both a pitching and hitting prodigy. The early 1980's success of the Chicago Cubs (well, 1984) could be traced to several notable greats from Philadelphia, just as the Phillies' 1983 wheezers were composed of several members of the once indomitable Big Red Machine. See where I'm going? No? Well, no, I suppose not.

According to my research (all two minutes, online) a "Jetskin" is a manufactured Lycra garment that provides travel comfort and works to prevent deep vein thrombosis. It also helps slow the onset of jet lag. It's also the term we use to describe Jets players that have jumped or been dealt to the Washington Redskins, especially over the past five years.

We bring this issue up because Pete Kendall is the most recent departure to Washington, and I for one am a little sad to see him go. Remember that Kendall said he was promised an extra million by Eric Mangini for mentoring both D'Brickshaw Ferguson and Nick Manggold, which he did to great effect. At training camp, he is seen physically separating himself from the same young fellows whom he tutored. He did not see himself as a Jet any longer. I will miss Iron Pete, last year's offensive captain. Anyone who's learned a skill knows how edifying it is to mentor a young colleague, yet rarely does anyone appreciate the effort - not even in the financially saturated world of pro football. Weeb Ewbank was miserly with great players like Verlon Biggs. It happens. Kendall is also 34. Jeremiah Trotter was let go by the Philadelphia Eagles this past week, guilty of being the slightly less geriatric age of 30.

For many years, the Redskins organization has been where good Jets went to go to get kind of mediocre. Santana Moss, Laveranues Coles, John Hall, Randy Thomas, Chad Morton. All good, not great. I was always flattered by the notion that whatever the Jets had in the first few years of the century, the Redskins sought it, then purchased it with the idea of earning a Super Bowl. Someone needed to tell Daniel Snyder that it's hard to win a championship with only the particular strength of former Jets. It has gone both ways; Coles is back in New York (he is better than Moss, I believe) and the Jets were for a brief time the payroll for Patrick Ramsey who was previously one of Steve Spurrier's ill-fated starting quarterbacks. Kendall joins this dubious legacy, and though Joe Gibbs is there again, the word on the street is that the Jets still got better end of the deal with draft choices in exchange for Pete.

Jetskins have fared better in the past. Verlon Biggs went to two Super Bowls, one with the Jets and one with the Redskins. John Riggins' two Super Bowls were with the Redskins and long after the Jets. So long as Riggins was on the Redskins, I gave them my heart on loan, especially when it eased the grind of a long Jets season.
I'll never forget the strange feeling of forlorn pride I felt while watching Super Bowl XVI in 1983, sort of like a forgotten parent to a now famed progeny, when Riggins broke free of the Dolphins' defense and scrambled 43 yards on fourth down inside four minutes for the go-ahead touchdown. "I always knew he could do it," I said with tears in my eyes, looking over at the tattered poster of him playing for the Jets against the Dolphins in 1972. I always did.