Here Come The Warm Jets: Week 13

I admit it: I’m a hypocrite.

At the end of the Jets-Miami game, I was rooting for the Jets to run up the score. I wanted them to put up 50 on the Dolphins. I was looking for the utter and total humiliation of the team and their douchetastic coach.

So, yeah, a few weeks back I was calling out the Patriots for playing without class, and then loudly exhorting my team to do the same thing. Whatever. Such are the feelings that arise when playing and handily defeating your most hated of rivals.

This game also goes along with my theory of the modern NFL, in the age of parity:

Every season, every team will play one game where they will do everything right – every call works, every decision pans out, every bounce goes your way. They will look unstoppable.

And every season, every team will play one game where everything they do will be wrong, and the game will get out of hand quickly.

The Jets actually played these two games in a row – the Miami game was an example of the former, the Dallas game on Thanksgiving of the latter.

All the other games you play in the year will be reasonably close. It is how you do in these games that determines the season.

Last year, the Jets did well in these closer games. Thus, 10-6. This year, they have faltered in these games. Thus, 3-9.

This is what allows for teams that seemed moribund one year to be playoff contenders the next, and vice versa. Other examples include Green Bay and Cleveland (bad record last year, great record this year) and Baltimore and New Orleans (great record last year, bad record this year.)

This is what gives people like me some hope. Sure, this year blew. But with a good draft pick and free agent signing or two, we’ll be right back in the mix next year.

I’m also relieved that the Miami game worked out this way. I really didn’t feel like having to follow through on the whole Fire Mangini thing. That would have been a lot of work and time and money and it would have just been pointless anyway.

Now all there’s left to do this year is to not be embarrassed by the Patriots in two weeks – they can lose, sure, but it can’t be by an embarrassing score. They have to be in the game.