Published: Oct 27, 2024 by Josh Mazen
September 13, 2015
I walked downstairs as a normal person does, finding my dad in front of the TV. I had just graduated from Tulane a few months ago, and life was in a weird limbo. I was going to be starting my coding bootcamp in a few days and was still living at home, trying to work out a long distance relationship and figure out what the hell my career would look like. Living at home at 22, soon to be 23, in the suburbs of New Jersey with a lot of uncertainty was not exactly the most thrilling life. That day felt like any ordinary day and would end like any ordinary day, but little did I know it would be the start of one of the biggest cosmic blunders of my life.
You wanna watch the Jets game with me?
my dad asked. “Sure,” I said, having had really nothing to do. I didn’t care for football at that point in my life, to the surprise of most people who know me today. Like, I really didn’t give half of a fuck about sports in general. All I knew about football, having lived in a house where my dad watched Joe Namath win a Super Bowl when black people were barely allowed to drink from the same water fountain, was we don’t like the Patriots but the Jets are bad. Easy enough. So I sat there and watched as Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chris Ivory, and Brandon Marshall tore up the Cleveland Browns, who ended up being one of the worst teams in football, 31-10. My only real memory was this crazy ass shit:
So a few quarters later and Johnny Football blah blah blah, I thought “Huh, neat. That was fun.” and went about my day. Sure as shit, next week, I watched them again with my dad as they beat the Colts with Andrew Luck having essentially no joints in his shoulder. “Hey, maybe this team is actually pretty cool.” They lost to the Eagles next week, but I needed a frame of reference to know the difference between losing and winning. Slowly but surely, I became a Ryan Fitzpatrick truther (the Jets were many teams to undergo the Fitzpatrick spellbind). I was looking up NFL standings, seeing what kind of route we needed to make the playoffs. I learned a few players names aside from the QB. This team felt destined to make the postseason and potentially make a run at the Super Bowl. All of it came to a head when this play happened:
DID THAT REALLY HAPPEN?!?!?!
This is the stuff that is supposed to happen against the Jets. Our coach is supposed to make one of the most mind-bogglingly stupid calls to kick the ball away during sudden-death overtime. Our defense lets the 4th receiver on the depth chart rumble for 87 yards. We let Eric Decker get behind the corner and score a walk-off touchdown. I remember my family was in New Hampshire that weekend, surrounded by Patriots fans who were STUNNED. They had just won the Super Bowl last year and lost to the FUCKING JETS! My friend Rob called me and said “Dude, we’re going to the playoffs.” This next sentence makes me think about backdiving butt naked out of an airplane:
That was the happiest moment I’ve ever had as a fan of this team.
The next week, against a mediocre Bills team that had nothing left to play for, the Jets diarrhea-ed themselves and lost 22-17. The Pittsburgh Steelers, my mom’s favorite team, held the tiebreaker due to in-division something or other and therefore made the playoffs instead of the Jets. The season was over. My dad and I hung our heads in shame as he uttered a mantra that would stick with us to this day.
SAME
OLD
JETS
After the sting of that loss, I felt like I was invested. I took up fantasy for the first time, determined to make this a regular facet of my life. I regularly talked to the people in my office about football, giving the impression this was a core part of my identity. This team was so close to the playoffs, they’ll just have to come back next year and clean up their little mistakes. The culture had changed; the Jets weren’t losers anymore! Yeah sure, Fitzpatrick had the weirdest holdout ever, but once he got signed, there was nothing that would stop us! The defense was loaded, and they just signed Matt Forte. Surely, nothing could go wrong!
Narrator: Josh is a fucking idiot.
The Jets went 5-11. They got teabagged by the Patriots, twice. Ryan Fitzpatrick threw 6 picks in a game and was benched for Geno Smith, who tore his ACL within 15 minutes. Then they lost a bunch of games. Then Bryce Petty was a thing. THEN THEY WON A MEANINGLESS GAME FOR NO REASON. THEN THEY DIDN’T DRAFT PATRICK MAHOMES BECAUSE SOME BULLSHIT NAMED CHRISTIAN HACKENBERG WAS ON THE ROSTER AND THEY DRAFTED A SAFETY WITH NO HANDS.
…I can feel myself becoming irate, which is the opposite point of this post. The Jets have been a tire-fire since that magical touchdown throw. There’s so much to unpack, but here are the lowlights:
- Austin Sefarian-Jenkins catching a TD and having it called a fumble out of the back of the endzone, game over.
- Hiring Adam Gase. I was at a friend's house very drunk on wine and damn near broke my phone when I dropped it from horror reading this news.
- Drafting Sam Darnold, only to have no protection or weapons. Mind you, they traded 3 2nd round picks to acquire his services and depleted an already shitty team. He got mono, then he proceded to see ghosts. I went to the seeing ghosts game and didn't sleep a wink after it was done.
- Almost completing the Tank for Trevor, then winning 2 meaningless games at the end of the year. We had to take Zach Wilson, who was terrible from jump.
- Trading for Aaron Rodgers, who promptly tore his achilles tendon. Season over.
For each of those travesties and the many others that have occurred since 2016, I always had an excuse ready.
- “The players suck.”
- “The head coach is in over his head.”
- “The o-line is no good.”
- “We were right to fire the GM, he was a bum.”
- “Once we get a new QB everything will be ok.”
Suddenly, the excuses just rang hollow.
This year has been the most illuminating as a now former fan of this team. Aaron Rodgers is relatively healthy, and they STILL KEEP LOSING. Everything just looks hard. They fired the coach after 5 games because either Aaron is the shadow GM and wanted him gone or the owner had an axe to grind with him. Saleh had his issues as a coach, but the rest of this staff is so clearly in over its head. The owner does not care. He will do what it takes to win the headlines or appease the fanbase. The bottom line is not winning. The bottom line is whatever feels good in the moment for a petulent nepo baby who wants to be best buds with Donald Trump so badly he abandoned his post as owner to hand it to his idiot nepo baby brother. There is no point in being a fan of this team so long as Woody Johnson owns the team. They will not win any meaningful football games or vie for a championship, full stop. They might win a few here and there, but never when it really matters.
The splash of water moment
My expectations, like many other Jets fans this season, were the highest they’ve been in over a decade. Super Bowl. Plain and simple. This team is not close to a contender. Today, they lost to arguably the worst team in football. I think the Jets take the cake there now. They’re horribly coached and undisciplined, and you know how I reacted?
I didn’t.
I did not watch the Jets today. Not for being too busy, simply for not caring. For the first time in 9 years, I acted as I would have on September 12th, 2015. No anger, no joy. I went to Trader Joe’s, fed my neighbor’s cats, and played with my own kitties (oh shit gotta make a post on them. They’re the best.)
“Okay well if you don’t care anymore, why are you posting this?”
Settle down you donkey brain, I’m getting there.
With fandom, you are tying a piece of your identity to something that you have little control over. Whether it’s sports, music, TV, public figures, whatever it is, that becomes a huge part of who you are. The Jets were a way to connect with my friends who were already watching the games and to connect with my dad, who I’m sure deep down always wanted me to care more about sports when I was growing up. My wife (the previously mentioned girlfriend) never could understand how people could tie their identity to something that would cause them to relinquish emotional control. Maybe she’s more independent of a thinker than me; it’s part of the reason I married her.
The thing is, I always realized she was correct on a logical level. There is absolutely no reason to do this, especially when you constantly spend your Sundays frustrated and emotionally drained. I’ve wasted YEARS of my life thinking about some corporation and how adult millionaires that I’ve never met will play a game better than other adult millionaires. There were so many more positive outlets I could have had but didn’t because I held out hope that this would one day make me happy again.
I suppose that’s the takeaway here. Create your own happiness through efforts you can control. Read more, spend time with friends and family, learn a new skill or sharpen an old one. Whatever it is, these are the things that will truly define us in the end. This season has made me realize I want to do all of those things more and spend less time on dumb bullshit that doesn’t matter.
Letting go of the Jets will be hard. As stupid as that sounds, being a Jets fan has become a massive part of my identity and will require legitimate work to get rid of. I suppose this is somewhat of a journal entry to get some catharsis and to maybe encourage other Jets fans (or Carolina Panthers and Cleveland Browns fans) to do the same. You aren’t defined by anything, no matter who much it feels like you are. You don’t have to root for anything you don’t want to, and you certainly don’t have to punish yourself. Be bold enough to challenge parts of your identity while realizing it doesn’t fundamentally make you a different person. The only one that defines you is you. And for the love of God, don’t define yourself by a sports team owned by a baby-lotion peddler.