The Jets' lost season

New York Daily News

By Joe Schackman

Three-quarters of the way through the season, it's clear that the New York Jets have quit.

Let’s start by getting this out in the open: the Jets are a terrible football team. They have a head coach struggling to reinvent himself; a general manager who left the roster full of glaring gaps; a defense so blinded by its hype that it’s run smack into a harsh reality; and of course two quarterbacks at the rock bottom of their short careers.

It’s not just that the Jets are bad, though. A lot of teams are bad, and New York fans have witnessed their fair share of them. It’s that these Jets are bad and show no inclination to do anything about it. They’re floating toward season’s end, lifeless.

The issues start at the top, with quarterback Mark Sanchez. Anointed as the franchise’s savior before he ever took a snap, the former fifth overall pick rode a strong defense and powerful running game to back-to-back AFC championship games, and looked as if he might turn into a real life NFL signal caller.

Just two years removed from that success, he’s far from the Jets’ dream quarterback. The team went 8-8 after elevating him from game manager to offensive centerpiece, and since then he’s only backpedaled faster. Burdened this year by the criticism and finger pointing that accompanies a poor season, and with a dash of Tebow hysteria thrown in, Sanchez is as confused as ever. He no longer mopes on the field, thanks to the body language coach hired especially for him a few years back, but instead seems to have swung clear in the other direction. Mistakes elicit little reaction, and he appears stuck in a state of detachment. Sanchez has shown enough flashes of raw ability to prove that he could become a good quarterback. The unfortunate question is now how badly he wants to fulfill that promise.

It’s impossible to tell whether Sanchez’s attitude has dragged down the rest of the team, or vice versa. But the bottom line is that the team is wholly uninspired, and that’s losing them games in spite of their talent. There are all-pro linemen and first-round picks scattered throughout the defense, and the Jets swore earlier in the season that they had fixed their locker room issues. It’s difficult to believe that though, especially when divisive figures like Santonio Holmes and Bart Scott are still around. Once the Jets lost leader Darrelle Revis to injury, it’s not hard to imagine that the general atmosphere deteriorated fast.

The on-field results, unsurprisingly, have been embarrassing. New York was blown out by the 49ers, Patriots and Dolphins. After the loss to San Francisco, cornerback Carlos Rodgers accused the Jets’ defense of quitting in what was more a statement of the obvious than a scandalous accusation. Respectable performances against the Texans, Colts and Rams have only reinforced that sentiment, demonstrating how well New York can play when it puts in the most basic levels of effort.

The Jets are badly in need of a change, and we will likely see some major personnel moves at the end of the year. But whether that translates into a better overall outlook will depend on what happens in the front office. Owner Woody Johnson is a few publicity stunts away from Dan Snyder status, just years after winning praise for his willingness to take risks on players and coach Rex Ryan. That healthy aggressiveness turned into a hunger for headlines somewhere down the line, starting with a misguided campaign for another season of Hard Knocks that was quickly upstaged by the media circus that is Tim Tebow. Johnson won the back page battle, that’s for sure. But he undermined GM Mike Tannenbaum, Ryan and Sanchez in the process, and did it for a marginal player with no clear role in the Jets’ offense (or special teams, or defense). He broke the cardinal rule of ownership: don’t meddle. Fixing the Jets means first fixing Johnson’s mindset and returning him to a more passive role where he sets a vision, hires good people and then sits back to watch it all play out.

This has been a strange era for Jets football. After two deep playoff runs, it’s hard to call it a failure. Yet calling it a success isn’t entirely truthful either. The team was always loud, often obnoxious and truly thought it was much better than it was. When the Jets were winning, that was acceptable. That’s not the case anymore.

Joe Schackman is an editor and co-founder of Began in '96.