As Usual, 'Island Of Misfit Toys' Beckons Jets

By The Lantern

For a brief few minutes on Sunday I lost power in my house. I was sitting in the mancave helping my 6-year-old put together his Bionicle and watching the Jets. When the TV went black I felt a bit relieved. On some level I was thrilled because if the power stayed out I couldn't watch the Jets potentially lose another game they should have won.

But, alas, the good people at my local utilities were on top of their game this day. Power was restored in a few minutes and DirecTV rebooted itself.

The Jets, however, suffered from a power outage all afternoon and now have no hope of rebooting their season.

At 4-5 following an absolutely horrendous 24-22 loss to a Jacksonville club that had only managed to beat awful Tennessee twice, putrid St. Louis and equally bumbling Kansas City the Jets are finished for 2009.

The wonderful and unexpected 3-0 start now seems more like a cruel prank orchestrated by a fraud of a team led by a coach who looks more and more every week like he's totally in over his head, sparkling resume or no sparkling resume.

All of Rex Ryan's preaching and demanding has fallen on deaf ears. These Jets are no different than the countless teams to don the jersey before them. They simply do not know how to win. And what's crazy is this has gone on forever. Weeks, years, decades, it never changes. The Jets are the armpit of the NFL. Even when they manage to put on some sweet smelling fragrances they wipe them away by stepping in what the local dog has left behind.

It's now beyond comical.

I'm all into Twitter now and even those folks, the many who follow me, are as disgusted as the old school fans who either make the trek to the Meadowlands or watch on rabbit ear-clad televisions every week.

There's simply no escaping that smell, the odor of defeat. It follows us everywhere we go and all the showering in the world doesn't free us from it.

I see no way this team turns things around. None. They may show up next week against the Patriots in Foxborough and may even hang for a while, but, really, we all know how that game will end.

You don't need to be a media member, NFL player or former great to know what the Jets needed to do to beat the Jaguars. We all said it. Stop Maurice Jones-Drew and you win.

Yet the Jets didn't stop him and let average David Garrard play as if he belongs in the NFL. Even down just 8 at the half and with several adjustments made on defense, the Jets still found a way to screw things up.

The Jets didn't allow a first down in the second half until the Jaguars' final drive, naturally. Garrard proceeded to pick the secondary apart and Jones-Drew showed why he "gets it" and is an elite running back when he fell down at the 1 instead of scoring and giving the Jets the ball back.

I'm really not armed with the proper vernacular to fully sum up what the Jets are. I have to bite my tongue out of fear of sounding redundant. I wish there was a different way to describe the pain, but there isn't. It is what it is. We all need to either find a secondary team (which I have with the Seahawks) or just swear off football Sundays.

The Jets are an addiction, and with that vice comes agony for the fan and everyone who knows him or her. I have seen the most optimistic fans do a 180 this season, even though they know the Jets shouldn't win with a rookie quarterback and first-year coach, even, as the season has progressed, with key injuries to guys like Kris Jenkins and Leon Washington, and even though they still have many games left.

Because they, like me, now know. It just took them a while to accept it. Don't blame them. We all come around sooner or later.

I have read many people on Twitter complain about Brian Schottenheimer's play-calling, about the big bark, no bite defense, about questionable special teams. But really that's all water under the bridge. The truth is the Jets' problems are systemic throughout the entire organization. No one area is ever to blame because a new one fails the next week.

The Jets do not tackle. They do not run pass patterns properly. They never seem to know where they need to be on the field, especially in crucial situations. They don't communicate properly.

But the real crime here is the Jets don't believe in themselves. They never have. If they did, we, the fans, wouldn't be glass half-empty people. And while some claim they are true optimists, I don't believe them.

Because any Jets "fan" who says that hasn't been paying attention for decades.

I had hoped this would have been the first season in the last 10 or so where I wouldn't be forced to bust out my annual "Jets Belong On The Island Of Misfit Toys" column. But in truth, they don't just belong there, they rule it.

So stay tuned. The "Rex-in-a-box" could be a big seller this holiday season.