Keidel: Jets' Problems Are Systemic, Which Likely Means No Real Change Coming
By Jason Keidel
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The Jets have descended into the netherworld of irrelevance, equal parts punch line and punching bag, almost unworthy of watching or reportage.
The Jets spent Halloween weekend masquerading as a football team. But the trick was on them, as always, as they got smashed by the Kansas City Chiefs. And on you, for patronizing a team that has patronized you for 45 years.
And for all the horror-film symmetry this season, you still don't sense the expected exasperation that comes with this kind of incompetence. Simply, the Jets fan should be furious and he is not, at least not publicly.
The Jets and their fans take too much solace in the past, in promise and promises. Gang Green is always a play or two, a player or two, from some glorious epoch that never arrives. Otherwise logical people actually think this season is salvageable.
I ask why you put up with the Jets, pointing out that this kind of abuse in any other relationship would warrant a breakup, if not a call to authorities. You say you're not quitters, that leaving the Jets would be no different from abandoning your family and trying to find a new one. God bless you, on some level.
It was silly to expect the backup quarterback to revive the moribund franchise. Michael Vick is barely a facsimile of his formerly gifted self. But even at a fraction of his former traction, Vick is better than Geno Smith, who vomits the ball to the opponent with record-breaking alacrity. And if Vick were to get a real shot at the starting job, he should have gotten reps with the first team months ago.
The only streak of light that slips through the rather stained glass in Gang Green's house is the surreal paradox that they still play hard for Rex Ryan. Despite getting gutted by his GM -- we're all fluent in the irony that the cap-savvy Idzik short-changed Ryan by $20 million -- Ryan is still beloved by his locker room.
But that's not enough anymore. While the cognoscenti has called for Ryan's vocational head for months, if not years, I've never seen the utility in canning the loquacious coach.
But something has to be done, if only for the symbolism. Gang Green has gangrene, rotting, if not entirely rotten. Even on good teams, victory is a vice, a corporate drug in sports that has no substitute.
Even if you don't buy Bill Parcells' mantra that you are what your record says you are, there is a bottom in every industry, in every sport, in every team. And if Jets thought they hit it before, they found a trap door. The Jets have just spent eight games, half a season, losing. They have not won since they beat the Oakland Raiders over two months ago. Only the ghost of Al Davis trumps the comical incompetence of the Jets.
Many Jets fans are watching with one eye on the television and the other on the draft. "Wait until we get Jameis Winston," they say. Winston is the worst possible choice, of course, which a cynic could assert makes him perfect for the Jets. Given his rap sheet in a small college town, imagine a reckless, entitled athlete who can't handle the rigors of Tallahassee playing in New York City. But the Jets could draft Johnny Unitas and somehow mess it up.
That's because the disease is systemic. No amount of talent can remold the Jets into winners, as the problem is miles up the food chain. Woody Johnson is gazing down from his Learjet, pondering the mystery of his abject plunge, which couldn't be any more grave or graphic than if he leaped out of the Learjet himself. He is totally unaware that he is the problem. If the shampoo heir ran any of his other companies the way he ran the Jets he would clean house.
But just as newly minted mayors suddenly think they know how to run a police department, some owners think their prior success is a preamble to unlimited football success.
So yes, the best thing that could happen is a change of ownership. Absent that, Johnson should airdrop pink slips on the rest of management. Idzik should go, just on this year's biblical failure. And, sadly, Rex has to go, as well. No, he's not the primary problem, but if he got all the headlines when they reached two AFC title games, then Ryan has to eat this epic disaster.
It's not about fair as much as failure. When a team flat-lines like this, then everyone must be culpable and vulnerable. Unless you're the Jets, of course, who find new ways to lose and to remain losers.
Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonKeidel
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