The privilege (and burden) of hope
Musings of lessons learned from seasons of Jets past, and emotionally preparing for the one ahead.
When I last spoke to you on Just Jets, we closed the door on what had ultimately become the most disappointing season in franchise history.
After this fan base mostly lain dormant for well over a decade, only truly sniffing the postseason once in an ill-fated Ryan Fitzpatrick centric year, the 2023-24 season promised to be a beacon of hope after so many years amidst the darkness. The moment this franchise pulled the trigger to acquire Aaron Rodgers in a trade with the Packers, everything seemed to change.
Finally, the Jets actually found a super star player – let alone quarterback – that actually wanted to play for this team. He didn’t retire, the Packers didn’t back out and the Jets didn’t fumble the bag as they often do, they actually managed to bring him here. With that it felt as if maybe, just maybe, the direction of the winds was finally going change for a franchise that has been so woebegone for so long.
The months that followed the trade were filled with a level of promise that we have not seen in these parts since the early days of Rex Ryan, and for the first time in so long, it felt okay to hope again.
Despite the national media’s default always being set to underestimating or over-criticizing the Jets – a lot of which has been fair due to their mismanagement and follies over the years – there was still an overwhelming amount of excitement and hype surrounding this team everywhere you looked. They were the talk of the town, got scheduled for a bevy of primetime, nationally televised games, and were even the featured team on HBO’s ‘Hard Knocks’ for the first time since the 2010-11 squad that eventually made it to their second straight AFC Championship Game.
For the first time since I was in college, there was a pulse in my Jets fandom and an indescribable level of enthusiasm that I wasn’t sure would ever return.
Opening Night was finally here. Rodgers and the new-look Jets, in their old-look uniforms, were ready to take the stage for the first time on Monday Night Football vs. their division rivals in the Bills. It was the anniversary of September 11th, and Rodgers ran onto the field wielding an American flag to uproarious applause as the spotlight followed him across the field. The vibes were through the roof, and it was time for the New York Jets to return to a level of football glory that had eluded them for far too long.
And in a matter of four plays, it was all gone.
Never before, in such an epic manner, has the wind ever been taken out of the nails of millions of sports fans so suddenly. We waited the entire night for the news to become official but deep down inside, we all instantly knew what awaited us.
Another year in the darkness.
While the remainder of that opening night game did provide us with some thrills – and some of us fooled ourselves for the next few weeks or months into thinking that somehow Zach Wilson was any different from the quarterback we’d seen two years prior and could lead us to some sort of miraculous playoff season in time for Rodgers to ride in on his white horse and save the day with the fastest Achilles recovery of all-time (remember that pipe dream?) – it was only a matter of time until we all had to come to terms with our fate.
While the Jets may have been mathematically alive going into the season’s final month, their season died that night in Week 1 as Rodgers limped his way off of the field and onto the medical cart.
I can still remember how it felt in the days that came after. I’ve run the gambit in emotions as a sports fans over the years and as a Jets, Mets, Knicks and Rangers fan, I have experienced more heartbreaking, gut-punch moments than I can count. And even with all that, I don’t know that I’ve ever felt as dejected and depressed from sports than I did once Rodgers went down.
Not only did it make things far more difficult for the team on the field for the rest of the season, but it felt as if it were a signal from the Football Gods that yet again Jets fans were not allowed a moment of true joy, excitement or hope. Those feelings were dashed in such an epic, cruel and immediate way that it felt as if it could have only happened in a twisted Hollywood script, and yet it was still somehow so on brand for this franchise.
My one note to the Football Gods? It was a little too on the nose for my liking. Just saying.
But why am I recapping something we all know? Something we’ve all gone over in our heads a million times since last September? Because it all connects to this moment, right now. Here we are once again, entering a season with cautious optimism that maybe this year will be different.
“While I don’t want to be overly pessimistic or negative, I do think this season has taught me to be more emotionally guarded,” I wrote in my final newsletter last season. “I do believe this is a team that can get themselves to the position we thought they were in entering this season, but right now I’m in a “til I see it” mindset.”
As of writing this today, 358 days after last year’s Week 1 funeral, I think I still feel the same way. If I’m gauging the energy of the room properly, I’d say this rings true for a lot of Jets fans.
This isn’t to say that I think people aren’t genuinely excited for this upcoming season, because that would be far from accurate. There is excitement, more than we’ve seen at almost any point between let’s say the years of 2012 and 2022. But after this fan base had their hearts ripped out in the fashion they did, I think there are a lot more Jets fans guarding their hearts than there may have been at this point one year ago.
It’s the kind of sports PTSD where you tell yourself “I’m not going to do this to myself again,” before, of course, you do it all over again because you don’t know any other way. It’s how we’re programmed, and there’s not much we can do to change it even if we truly wanted to.
But deep down, despite all of the low moments that have brought so much angst, frustration, despair and maybe even some tears, I think we all know that we’d rather go that than risk potentially missing that one magical moment where things actually break your way. When the unthinkable becomes a reality. That’s why most of us became fans in the first place, right?
The thrill of the chase, the doubt, the highest of highs and yes, those incredibly low lows.
As we prepare to start this journey all over again I find myself reflecting on what I’ve learned over this past year, the ways I’ve changed as a sports fan and the ways that I’ve stayed the same. Despite everything, I do enter this season with the belief that this team has a legitimate change to prove us all wrong, finally break their 13-year playoff drought and dare I say compete for something even greater.
At the end of the day I, like many other Jets fans, will deal with the daily conflict that my logical and emotional sides of my brain will have through every moment of the season to come.
I am genuinely excited for whatever may come next, but I will certainly be a lot more guarded than I was this time last year. Whatever happens, though, we’ll be here.