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Some people are fans of the New York Jets. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the New York Jets. This 2017 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.




Your team: New York Dirty Diapers.


Your 2016 record: 5-11, featuring the swift decline and felony arrest of the team’s best player this decade, who signed back on with the Jets jussssst in time to fall apart. And somehow that was the LEAST heartbreaking thing to happen to this team last year. They waffled on benching Ryan Fitzpatrick, then forgot to tell him once they finally did. Geno Smith tore his ACL. Mo Wilkerson got benched for blowing off a birthday party his own teammates were gonna throw for him. Joe McKnight was shot to death. Dennis Byrd died in a car accident. Let’s all just go to sleep forever.

Your coach: Sentient headset lump Todd Bowles. I am constantly amazed by the Jets’ hiring cycle of “brash loudmouthed asshole” followed by “seemingly stable guy who actually doesn’t do much at all.” They can NEVER find a coach to bridge those two genres. When I think of the Jets human resources department, I think of a golfer stuck in a sand trap, shooting over the green into another sand trap, then shooting from that sand trap back into the ORIGINAL sand trap, then repeating that process forever. Join us in December when they fire Bowles and replace him with Bill Parcells’s plumber.

Your quarterback: Oh shit yeah, it’s my favorite time of year…THE CHRISTIAN HACKENBERG ACCURACY REPORT!












Amazing. Only the Jets could sign Tim Tebow and then find the one quarterback IN HISTORY who could make Tebow look like Chris fucking Kyle. Every time Christian Hackenberg throws a ball, it’s like he’s throwing it for the first time. “What is this strange oblong spheroid you’ve handed me? It certainly presents challenges from an aerodynamic perspective! Do I throw it using my hand or some sort of crude slingshot?” He’ll get the hang of it one day.



Anyway, if everything goes according to the Jets’ plan [endless, high-pitched squeals of laughter], you will never see Yung Hack there take a snap in 2017. Or ever, really. And that’s because the fabled Jets front office butt-trust won the Josh McCown sweepstakes. That’s $6 million for a 37-year-old lifeguard. In McCown’s career, he has averaged 173 passing yards a game, and 6.7 yards per attempt, below luminaries such as Brian Sipe and Eric Hipple. I have no idea how this team DOWNGRADED from Geno Smith and Ryan Fitzpatrick, but here we are. Every Jets QB is either a designated seatwarmer/mentor who is two weeks away from earning his pension, or a vegan-raw prospect with sub-CFL passing abilities. It’s beyond fucked.


Also, Bryce Petty is still here. I guess they think he’s some kind of pet or something.

What’s new that sucks: Good news! The Jets dicked over their longest-tenured defensive player by cutting him, without warning, three months after the opening of free agency! Would it surprise you if I told you that David Harris exacted his revenge on the Jets by signing with New England, where he will IMMEDIATELY win a ring? Of course it wouldn’t. God lives to watch the Patriots cuck this team on an endless loop. Nothing makes Belichick harder than watching them twist.


Good thing the team replaced Harris with…well, absolutely nothing. This team’s free agency effort was ghastly. They flashed their tits at Dont’a Hightower and he ran away screaming. They signed Morris Claiborne, whose confidence would shatter if you blew on it. They traded their 2014 first rounder for their 2012 third rounder. They signed Kelvin Beachum over from the Jags, and yet their best blocker is still a defensive lineman:


It gets worse. Revis is gone. Nick Mangold is gone (released while he was at Disney World). Eric Decker is gone. Brandon Marshall is gone to the Giants, along with Geno (who, against all odds, would probably be the best QB on this roster if he were still here). I swear if I showed you this team’s depth chart at wideout, you would die. It’s just… appalling. Something called Charone Peake is penciled in as a starter. One scout said this was the worst roster in a decade, and he wasn’t talking exclusively about Jets rosters. And they still have the same bozo coach and the same GM who helped steer them into this mess! I can’t watch. I won’t watch. Put this team on fucking C-Span 12.

Their first-round pick wants to be killed on the field.

What has always sucked: There’s also a special place in hell for the teams that are like “now we’re tanking” after already being fucking horrible forever. This is the Jets fourth rebuild of this decade alone, but this time you’re supposed to buy that shoving Josh McCown out there to fumble 60 times in the red zone is all part of some grand, long-term plan.


Never mind that the Jets, more than any team, excel at upping their organization-wide toxicity with every single loss. The Jets have always been a dire team that loses with almost inhuman persistence. But what makes them TRULY special is their remarkable ability to allow those losses to linger and foster ENDLESS, unyielding bitterness…the kind of bitterness that leads to broken jaws, and players openly trashing teammates, and potential prospects (like, say, Sam Darnold!) fleeing before the Jets even have a chance to get on the phone with them.

And the worst part is they can’t even tank right. Every Jets fan KNOWS that they’re going to go into Week 16 with, like, a 3-11 record and then beat the fucking Chargers and lose the No. 1 draft pick to the Browns. It is preordained. Every Jets fan knows they need to tank this season and is bracing for a terrible record, but Bowles is coaching for his job and will likely be fired if the team does tank, so they’re going to pull off at least two or three meaningless wins and draft fifth or sixth again. You guys miss out on every Peyton Manning, and you always will. Again, fucked. All so fucked.


Also: Buttfumble.

Did you know? The most famous player in franchise history is an alcoholic loudmouth who trashes the team every year and wasn’t actually that good? This is the 50th season since the Jets won Super Bowl III. Fifty years, man. You got 50 more years of having old timey footage of Joe Namath running into that stupid tunnel as your high point.


What might not suck: WOODY’S OUT!


Thanks to President Trump, your shithead burnout of an owner took a cushy gig as ambassador to the U.K. (we’ll be at war with them within a year), which means that Woody’s brother is now your team’s temporary custodian until Trump makes him Secretary Of Greatness or something. According to this article, the other two Johnson heirs died from a motorcycle accident and coke overdose, respectively. So give it up for Christopher Johnson: The One Who Isn’t Dead.

HEAR IT FROM JETS FANS!

Roy:

Hahahahahahahahahaha. This fucking team.

John:

I have enough hate in my heart to start a car.

Jack:

This team is an abomination even by Jets standards.

Beef:

What the fuck? Fuck. Just... I mean... just... fuck.

Roy:

PSL balance owed down to $5,645. I will never die!

Eric:

Isn’t it enough to just admit I’m a Jets fan? It’s fucking brutal.

Tony:

Here’s to accidentally going 5-11 without an ounce of hope in sight.

Tom:

I’d be better off punching myself in the dick for three hours on 16 Sundays a year but I’m a masochist so I watch the Jets instead.


Brian:

Fuck the Jets.

Moshe:

After a 2009 Jets game I waited on line for 15 minutes to take a picture with Fireman Ed. He looked and smelled like he was about to throw up.

Devin:

Wouldn’t it be faster to list all the reasons why they DON’T suck?

Matt:

When the Jets drafted Christian Hackenberg, I screamed as if I had just seen a horrific accident. What other team does that to its fans? Also, fuck Fireman Ed with a fireman’s pole.


Kyle:

I went to see the Jets last season in Cleveland (the 2-5 Jets against the 0-7 Browns). The Jets played like absolute shit and required a huge second half comeback to barely pull off a 31-28 victory. Leaving FirstEnergy Stadium was ridiculous. Chants of J-E-T-S were ringing around the concourses like we had just witnessed a Super Bowl victory, and basically every single conversation I heard/had with Jets fans were about how this win would set off a spark, and the team was about to pull off a run and go undefeated the rest of the way to go 11-5, and sneak into a wildcard. They won 2 games the rest of the season. Fuck Jets fans (especially my dad for making me a fan of this team).

Thomas:

The New York Jets are the red wedding. They are Trump winning. They are the inevitable catastrophe that happens when you make awful choices. In most places, you root for the one home team. In New York, you get to choose between a relatively stable franchise that’s good for a couple Super Bowls every other decade or a flaming dumpster full of diapers. Us fans deserve the Jets to suck because we chose this hot garbage.


Steven:

My dad had season tickets for 25 years and got relegated to the second-to-last row of the upper deck when they moved to MetLife and cucked everyone into buying seat licenses that he refused to get. The first game there we had our new seats, a preseason game, we got COVERED in ash and debris because they shot the fireworks too close to the stadium. Everyone in the last 3-4 rows was. Woody Johnson should be launched into the sun.

Robert:

Please include the clip of the Week 1 Jets/Browns game from a couple years back, in which our future, 38-year old starting quarterback gets helicoptered in the end zone, fumbles, and gets concussed. [Ed Note: wish granted] That play, if nothing else, is a metaphor for the current state of the Jets. A giant turd, twisting in the wind, heading for a cataclysmic crash that will cause severe brain trauma. I hope Trump cuts entitlement programs just so Todd Bowles can’t collect unemployment in January.


Alexandra:

Because the first game of every season since we’ve been together (dated for 5 years before almost 11 years married) I do a countdown until the first time my long suffering husband yells something to the extent of “You guys suck! Why do I do this to myself every FUCKING year!!! No defense, no offense!!!” while pacing our living room like a lunatic and then settling back on our couch for another season of wearing his Namath jersey and shaking his head in resignation. He has never made it past first quarter. EVER. Fuck Woody Johnson, fuck Fireman Ed, fuck everything about MetLife Stadium and fuck the Jets for taking my Sundays in the fall for the past 16 years for no good reason.


Mike:

If this team had any faith in Hackenburg they would have kept some of the offensive talent around just so he’d have something consistent to work with. They are so clearly trying to avoid playing him yet again because if he never takes the field then no one can know just how badly they reached on him in the 2nd round.


Jen:

Because even the NYC’s Kmart suggests that you might not want to invest fully in the team upfront—maybe try amortizing the cost of that mug over the span of the season.


Alex:

I think I keep rooting for the Jets because I prefer baseball, and the continued existence of the Jets franchise means the Mets won’t necessarily be the most maddeningly dysfunctional team that I like. Sure, half of this year’s promising Mets squad fell into the Springfield Mystery Spot with Ozzie Smith, but a quick trip through Deadspin’s Jets tag can help ease the pain by comparison. The Jets signed Josh McCown! The Jets kicked one of their best veterans to the curb without even a whiff of advance notice! The Jets pumped their players full of Vicodin for multiple seasons and still couldn’t win a title! I’m 27 years old and my top moment as a Jets fan was watching them beat the Patriots in a room full of Massholes in Boston in the 2010 divisional round. Then the Jets traveled to Pittsburgh and couldn’t figure out how to solve the legendary ground game of Rashard Mendenhall Fuck Rashard Mendenhall, fuck the scarecrow made of Meadowlands reeds and Namath vomit that will be starting at QB by Week 10, and as always, fuck Tom Brady with a billy club made of rally-worn MAGA hats. P.S. — The Lyndon Johnson administration was in its final days the last time the Jets won a title. My mom, who raised me to be a Jets fan, was 17. She’s dead now.


Peggy:

“At least the Jets will have a really great draft pick next year! Maybe even #1!” This was actually said to me during last week’s OTAs, after witnessing The Christian Hackenburg Experience. So, about 90 days before football season actually begins, the outlook for the Jets is so dire that I’m being encouraged to immediately focus on the NEXT season. FML.


Jeff:

If anybody on the Deadspin staff (except Dom) can name five current Jets they deserve a raise and a pension.


CJ:

I’m not from New York, but I lived in Connecticut when I really began getting into football. I want to pick a localish team that was young, up-and-coming, and not the eternal evil of the Patriots or captained by the dumbest fucking Manning. This was in 2009 when the Jets had young Mark Sanchez and a stout defense, and new shiny head coach Rex Ryan. For the first couple years, things were pretty great. And then I learned what it really means to be a fan of the most disorganized organization outside of Washington as I watched everything from QB to coaching staff to front office to D-Line break, implode, explode and vomit all over themselves simultaneously. There’s no hope for the future. This team doesn’t have an identity. Our head coach could be a face on one of those gag “6 moods of Bowles” t-shirts, where the face is the same no matter the emotion that’s captioned. The front office does things like promote WR David Nelson’s amazing charity work one week, and cut him the next. I’m not even sure who is left on the team with a recognizable name. How do we always have issues with cap space when we have Sheldon Richardson playing 9 positions on defense, and overflowing MetLife Stadium trash bags for offense?


Rory:

I know more Giants fans who tune in for the express purpose of watching the Jets lose than I know actual Jets fans. The Jets make the Knicks look like the Holy Roman Empire. MetLife Stadium isn’t actually that far from the city, but getting there via public transit is an hours-long affair that requires careful planning and ruthless efficiency, two qualities that the franchise you’re going to see have not evidently possessed for years. Jets fans like to refer to our stadium as “JetLife,” as if that would ever catch on.


Charlie:

Every year on the anniversary of the butt fumble I wake up to texts from my friends of video of that goddamn play and every time the only defense I have is the 2010 AFC Divisional Game. Fuck the Jets. Fuck my friends. Fuck my dad for making a fan of this shitty team and fuck me for being stupid enough to listen to him.


Nick:

- Our coach is bargain bin Jim Caldwell, a bland dipshit who can often be seen on the sidelines in deep thought about whether he remembered to tip the maid at the team hotel that morning. Say what you want about Rex but he at least outsmarted the opposition on occasion whereas Todd Bowles just seems like a mannequin of what an NFL coach looks like. - Josh McCown is a more boring, less capable version of Fitzpatrick and will lead the league in nothing but interceptions and bad NY POST puns (“SEND IN THE MCCLOWNS” “QUIT MCFROWNING AROUND” “MCDROWNING IN LOSSES”) - The Jet’s attempt to tank for the #1 pick is gonna end one of two ways: 1) the team pulls out a meaningless 13-9 win in December to improve to 4-12 and fall out of the draft’s top five 2) or the Jets go 1-15, get the #1 pick and watch as all the top QB’s return to school for another year. you can just tell Sam Darnold dreads the idea of having to be this teams savior. - I had to watch the Super Bowl with my Dad, a Giants fan (ugh), who loves Tom Brady (not good), probably because of his politics (even worse), and the experience was as soul crushing as it sounds. - Our owner is an ambassador for Trump now and he fits into that administration like a fucking glove between his sopping impulsivity and his glaring lack of guile. Jim Dolan or the Steinbrenners might be greedy and shitty to fans but people (especially the local media) are scared of them and cave to their interests. Woody Johnson is football Fredo and everyone knows it. - The most depressing part of it all is even the Jets good teams from the end of the 2000's are difficult to look back fondly on now because the faces of those teams have become punchlines (Sanchez, Rex) or were ignominiously cut and shoved out the door (poor poor Nick Mangold). - George RR Martin will finish his books before Christian Hackenberg starts an NFL game


Uriah:

I’m a millennial, so my top 3 Jets moments in order are: 1. Rex and the Sanchize beating the Patriots in the 2010 Divisional Round, punctuated by Bart Scott screaming that he “CAN’T WAIT” to lose to the Steelers in the AFC Championship 2. Rex and the rookie Sanchize beating the Chargers in the 2009 Divisional Round, punctuated by getting shut out in the 2nd half of the AFC Championship by Peyton and the Colts 3. ....the 2009 NFL Draft when they traded up to take the Sanchize Aside from a couple Eric Mangini and Herm Edwards playoff appearances, that’s it. My best Jets memories all involve Mark Sanchez, the man whose butt fumble was undefeated on “Worst of the Worst” for so long that ESPN had to raise it into the rafters. I would kill for a real quarterback. Between Chad “The Glass Man” Pennington, Brett Favre’s dick pics and Geno getting punched by his teammates, whoever is taking snaps consistently makes me hate myself for following this team. I miss Rex and I miss Sanchez. If they’re going to tank this season anyway, they might as well bring both of them back so Jets fans can re-live the two straight AFC Championship appearances. Until then, I’ll be in my bunker. Let me know when they draft a QB who can avoid hitting bystanders with his throws.


Adam:

The Jets make the Mets look like they’re run by a bunch of Google execs.

John:

A cotton ball has more personality than Todd Bowles.

Michael:

Every single decision made by any member of the Jets organization has been an abysmal failure since Joe Namath guaranteed the win. And yet somehow we Jets fans remain incredibly smug about Broadway Joe’s cojones and the subsequent victory, even though it happened sometime during the Pleistocene Epoch, while at the same time bemoaning the more recent success of the Giants. We’re just a hot mess of yearning and failure, and our stadium chant is the sum total of our spelling prowess. Put us out of our misery and send the Jets back to Division III.


Kyle:

I have never lived in New York nor do I have any family from there, and yet I have been a Jets fan as far back as I can remember. Why? My passion as a child was airplanes and therefore the Jets were my team. That’s it. This also translated to the Winnipeg Jets in hockey. Generally I’ve made good choices in life (college, career, marriage) but sports teams are not one of them. My family moved to Denver in 1997 at the start of the Broncos run to back to back Super Bowl wins. In the week leading up to the 1998 AFC Championship game I was relentlessly mocked at school for wearing my green Vinny Testaverde jersey among a sea of John Elway/Terrell Davis/Shannon Sharpe. After the Broncos victory (Fuck Keith Byars for that fumble) there was a voice mail on my parents’ answering machine. Someone had called collect and the message was “you’ve received a collect call from ‘JETSSUUUUUCK’” I’m still emotionally attached to the team name but everything else about this franchise should be drop kicked into a volcano.


Roy:

The smart play of course is for the Jets to go 0-16 and draft Sam Darnold. It’s what the fans want. It’s what Ira from Staten Island wants. So they are going to go 4-12, draft “the best player available regardless of position,” and then play him out of position.


Sean:

Brandon Marshall likening last season to wearing a dirty diaper is actually the most evocative and true description there is for Jets fandom, bar none. That sentiment should be the official team hashtag, get slapped on to $30 shirts (which I’d buy in a heartbeat), and engraved into MetLife in Latin because that’s how it will always be, now and forever, for this Drunk Jersey Uncle of a franchise. The Jets haven’t won a title since the Grateful Dead and lunar surface were new ideas. And as much as I enjoyed the ‘09/’10 playoff runs, I knew in the back of my mind that the idea of a Mark Sanchez-led squad winning the Super Bowl was a DMT-induced vision of the highest caliber. This season is going to be a hot trainwreck and will probably set the tone for the next century or so. I really have no plans of watching outside of any Fantasy relevance. I was in New Hampshire this past New Year’s and witnessed the most New England thing possible near our cabin: A group of Pats fans, ice fishing on the neighboring lake, listening to the Week 17 curb-stomp against the Dolphins on the radio. What amazed me, though, was that the game acted as this sort of quiet fire as the group otherwise drank, ate, and had a good time, seemingly confident that the Pats were handling their business and would ultimately win the game. I will never know such peace on a Sunday.


Rico:

It’s clear as day, I’m surprised I didn’t think of it sooner. Just about every Jets season ends up being the bizarro version of what rational thought thinks will happen with this team. Mid to High Playoff expectations? Dumpster fire of a season. Expected to get the first pick of the draft? Will outperform and start creating playoff buzz for the upcoming season. Rinse and repeat. This team will win about 6 games. McCown will be “fine” and its youth movement will develop one or two guys that we can be excited about until their inevitable regression/injury/signing with the Patriots. I’d be angry or hopeful but I’ve reached total fan zen. I now know the secret so they can’t possibly hurt me this year. YOU HEAR ME! YOU WON’T DO IT THIS TIME YOU PIECES OF SHIT! NOT THIS YEAR! FUCK YOU! I FUCKING HATE YOU!


Nate:

As a lifelong Patriots hater, I was actually happy for the Patriots taking David Harris. Not in a FU kind of way, but more that David Harris gets to play for a functional team and coach... something the Jets could never offer, ever. I actually hope he wins a championship. This team has let me down so much they have me rooting for the one team I despise.


Willis:

We have drafted one WR (Santana Moss) and no RBs in the 1st round since 2001. If that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about our incompetence on offense, aside from the fact that Vinny Testaverde is statistically our best QB in franchise history even though he never threw for more than 30 TDs, I don’t know what does.


Dallas:

We will go 4-12 this year, winning against NE in Week 17 since Brady will take that game off and go to France or something during that week and the bye week since they’ll have the 1 seed, win a game or two we shouldn’t have, but with that Week 17 win vs NE, we get ourselves the fourth pick in the draft rather than the first pick we were praying for all year. So even when he loses, Belichick wins.


Rob:

The teams I root for in each sport are the Jets, Mets, Islanders, and Knicks. For the past 30 years, not only have these teams all been horrible, they’ve also been arguably the most embarrassing teams in their respective sport. Out of these for teams, I hate being a Jets fan the most. By a landslide. That’s how much they suck.


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