Well that was a hilarious story outta nowhere. Geno Smith out 6-10 weeks from a broken jaw after a teammate punched him? Yes. Good stuff. Comedy Gold. Rex Ryan picking up IK, the guy who punched him, after getting cut? Fantastic. Sure, IK played a year under Ryan already, so there are legitimate football reasons why IK and Rex would join up, but man, that is sweet revenge trolling isn’t it. I will never stop loving Rex Ryan. Anyway the fight was apparently over something like a bet and Geno taunted IK right before the punch. No one deserves to have their jaw broken, but it’s still pretty funny. Fitzmagic has the starting job now, and I can’t wait for the 2 games when he looks like an All-Pro and gets everyone in the fanbase excited before turning from Fitzmagic into Fitzputrid.

Also yes, I saw the Sexy Rexy news, I’m not going to touch that unless it actually happens. I hope it happens. I’d love to see Rex release the dragon to Brandon Marshall.

Now that I’m done with that I’d actually like to address something related. This is a comic about the Jets. In the 3+ years I’ve been mocking football for a living, I’ve received exponentially more hate from Jets fans as opposed to anyone else. More than Chargers fans for Ringless Rivers jokes. More than Pats fans for deflategate jokes. It’s honestly astounding the level of hate I get from the Jets fanbase compared to anyone else. I know I’m going to piss someone off with each comic, some people take their fandom far too personally so any joke made about their team from an opposing fan is automatically a horrible attack on them. I’ve never operated under that philosophy, I believe everything can and should be mocked. I’ve accepted that at least one person will consider me an unfunny dick for every comic I make. One person will take apart the joke with pointless nitpicking and facts, ignoring that it’s not supposed to be 100% accurate. But the Jets hate is kinda strange.

I would like to mention that I am certainly not talking about all Jets fans. Many are nice and I have pleasant interactions with lots of them, and plenty are capable of laughing at their team. It’s just a weird trend I’ve noticed. Even on twitter, any Jets crack is instantly flooded with hate in my mentions, where most team jokes get no hate at all.

If I think about reddit in particular, I get accused of bias all the time, that I hate the Jets. I don’t get it. At first I wondered if they were right and I looked back upon my Jets history. The Jets appear here slightly more frequently than average, but most of the gags are right on par with my usual humor, the only one I’d even consider above my normal level of mean was the Geno Suicide comic, which coincidentally also happens to be one of the most popular comics I ever published, and probably one of my better executed jokes in general. I do not hate the Jets. Yes, I am a Giants fan, but I am not from New York, nor do I live there. I was not forced at a young age to pick a side. I have no built in bias towards the Jets. In fact I probably like the Jets more than I hate them. They have one of my favorite uniform schemes, I’d much prefer them to win over the Patriots, and despite the comics about him, I loved the hell out of Rex Ryan. Lastly, I admire how passionate their fans get at games, most Giants games are boring old farts who think Brandon Jacobs is still on the team. Jets fans will get loud and boisterous with fury during games, Giants fans will tell you to shush.

One of the reasons I seem to get accused of bias is the large amount of jokes I made about the Jets back during the infamous Buttfumble season and immediately following offseason. Yeah, I made a bunch of comics about them. Because that whole thing was funny as hell. I’m sorry, it was. I was far, far from the only person cracking frequent jokes that year. I can understand being bitter about that season, but to hold grudges about jokes made during that era, well it’s just a waste of energy because all of us were cracking jokes. That’s too much grudge to hold onto.

So anyway, if you are a Jets fan, and you are convinced I hate your team, try to shake that idea out of your head. I’m not mocking you or your fandom, I’m mocking this silly game with people throwing egg shaped balls and giving each other brain damage, and your team sometimes does something silly that is worth laughing at.

Also if you are mad about the 7-9 joke, it’s a joke, but it’s also probably not that unreasonable a guess for a team in the surprisingly beefy looking AFC East with severe questions at QB, under a new coach and system, and the best player on defense out for 4 weeks. I think 10 wins the absolute ceiling here and that the Jets will probably be in faint wildcard contention for a few weeks but never quite get close enough to get it.