The start of my day usually begins along these lines: Wake up. Brush teeth. Check Twitter.
For sports fans, Twitter is an online home. It’s easy to speak your mind, you’re able to get news, you can follow your favorite players, and you can interact with thousands of fans across the globe.
I’ve become an avid Twitter user as of late; since I downloaded it in January 2019, I have tweeted 7,558 times. Do the math – that’s a lot of tweeting.
So that should set the scene. I’ve just brushed my teeth. The minty freshness of Colgate whitening is burning my mouth (I brushed my tongue, it hurts, I have a sensitive tongue, let’s continue) and I’m opening Twitter. And I see this:
I immediately turn back and brush my teeth again. I’ve got to get the bad taste of that video out of my mouth. I should be used to it at this point, but it still stings.
The Jets are a laughing-stock. The butt of the joke. The easy dunk. The quick remark. When someone’s in a pickle, they can just say something like “haha jets bad” and then boom. Problem solved.
And it’s kind of merited.
I mean, the Jets did go 2-14. They did start the season on an 0-13 streak. They did only score 15.4 points per game last year (which is not good, not by any means). They hold the number 2 pick, meaning that they’re the second-worst team in the NFL. And each game was a slugfest.
But there’s a key word there.
Second-worst.
Way down south, almost a thousand miles away, a team sits on the northeastern part of Florida. They have sole possession of the first overall pick after finishing with a 1-15 record.
That’s really, really bad.
They won a game. Week 1. And tweeted this:
They then lost 15 straight games.
Just to make sure you understand this: The objective of the game of football is to win. You have 16 (17 now) chances to provide the best record with hopes of advancing to the playoffs.
The Jaguars only won one time. Of 16. Let’s put that in letters: WLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.
Not good.
So we’re clear. Based on 2020 record and performance, the Jaguars are worse than the Jets. But if you watched NFL media and nothing else, you would think the Jaguars to be much better.
Because of the Jaguars’ early win, they were locked into the 2nd overall pick until the Jets defeated the Rams in late December. When it looked like the Jets were incapable of winning a game, media outlets and fans began preparation for pushing consensus #1 overall pick Trevor Lawrence to the Jets. Some welcomed the idea, and some believed that Trevor Lawrence should stay in school. One even welcomed the idea of remodeling the draft system.
That would be Jeremy Schaap, host of Outside The Lines, a weekly ESPN morning show.
Because the Jets were in the position to select a top-tier QB, the draft had to change. This can’t happen, because the Jets are bad and they have to stay bad.
There was also the “Trevor Lawrence should stay in school because the Jets will simply ruin him” take. That circulated among the NATIONAL media.
In fact, former Falcons WR Roddy White advised Lawrence to return for his senior year at Clemson and avoid the Jets.
“If I’m Trevor Lawrence, if the Jets finish with no wins, I just go back to Clemson. … I just go back for another year,” White told The Big Lead’s Brian Giuffra. “I don’t want any part of that organization.”
Sure, Roddy. I too would turn down more than 30 million dollars to avoid playing for a specific team.
Guess what happened when the Jaguars secured the number 1 pick?
Crickets.
The media accepted the fact that Lawrence would be a Jaguar, the ‘stay in school’ crowd dissipated, and Lawrence is set to be a Jaguar on April 29th.
Yet what have the Jaguars done?
Why aren’t they a laughing-stock?
They have a horrific franchise win percentage. In fact, they have the 28th-lowest winning percentage in the 16th game era.
Of course, New York is a much bigger market than Jacksonville. Undoubtedly so. But who are the worst teams in baseball? The Florida/Miami Marlins? The Pittsburgh Pirates? Both small-market They get made fun of. What about hockey? The Buffalo Sabres are a joke of a hockey team. Small-market team. And even going back in the past with football, the Detroit (small-market) Lions and the Cleveland (small-market) Browns were made fun of.
So the Jets residing in Florham Park and the Jaguars setting up shop in Jacksonville has nothing to do with it. Is it easier to make fun of the Jets because they have been bad for an extended period of time?
Let’s look. Who else has been awful for a long time?
The Cardinals, the Bengals, the WFT, and the Panthers have historically had subpar seasons. But you don’t hear Jason Sudeikis talking about Joe Burrow in Ted Lasso.
The Jets have a bright future. They have the pick of the litter of QBs not named Trevor Lawrence. They have 10 draft picks in the 2021 draft. And Joe Douglas is an avid trader, so don’t be surprised if they acquire more picks before then.
Be it Zach Wilson, Justin Fields, or Trey Lance, the new Jets signal-caller will be tasked with the role of dredging the Jets’ reputation out of the murky pits it currently roams.
They’ll have the help of two coaches who worked under the brightest football mind in sports as well as the GM who inherited a sinking ship but is trying his darndest to fix it.
Who knows what will happen? I sure don’t. But it’ll be fun.
