The 2025 season is upon us and has started in the most usual way. A key starter on the Jets out for the season before providing an ounce of meaningful impact to a team that has been starved of impact players for a full generation. A lot of manufactured chatter on certain quarterback regarding “culture” by the usual media clickbait culprits. The same paragons of the press circuit who spent the last 24 months telling you about the Leadership and Culture change shift in a positive spin now telling you all about the negatives side effects those leaders left us with. The spin has gone full circle as the flattering articles about the current regime are published daily with lots of copied and pasted references to “breaths of fresh air” and “team first mentality” bandied across the various Sports mediums. Jet fans are still mid whiplash as we go from hoping Rodgers wins at Met Life Stadium to losing there within the space of year. The Autumn winds calls and we can’t but help come running. Football is back.

I’ll forgo my usual dramatics and leave behind the scene setting and exposition that often (always) colors my season preview. Not much has fundamentally changed in the Meadowlands. The Jets still wander the Wilderness in search for the greener pastures of the promised land. Expectations are thankfully limited and in line with the reality that we have taken a gamble that Fields we have settled on will bear fruit or can be abandoned with little cost. This year has been framed as a “new beginnings”. Success can be determined by any nebulous measurement of “progress” or “improvement” or “competitiveness” this organization chooses to use. I have slightly more defined criteria that will depend on a scale of how embarrassed I feel after each game. Once you get 15 years away from even sniffing the playoffs, wins and losses cease to be a meaningful metric. Once you trash any objective criteria of Sports Franchise success ( did you win the championship/ how close were you to winning the championship) then all other criteria become subjective. 

Now that our criteria has been set, I do have some very specific subjective metrics to evaluate whether it will be worth my time to watch this team past October, let alone write about them. 

Subjective Goal 1: Can we establish any type of coherent Offense identity?

This will/ should/ needs to be a Run the football team. A counterintuitive approach in today’s passing football league but a necessary one when considering the obvious fact that you need a quarterback who can operate a passing offense and an offensive line who can pass protect. We haven’t had both of those factors at the same time  in a couple dozen years. The million dollar question is can we design, coordinate, and execute an offense using the tools and strengths we have on hand instead of trying to force players to be what they are not. This team will need to fabricate offense by constantly threatening run options and inducing defenders to be so focused on a ball runner coming out of the backfield that the occasional pass lane can get open. There needs to be so much Smoke and Mirrors that David Blaine should be sending cease and desist letters to One Jet Drive. Every play should make the opposing defense feel like they are trying to fill out a multi-choice Scantron during the SATs. Maybe not the best example considering these guys probably didn’t spend to much time worrying about school applications since the majority of them were being recruited to play college football by the age of twelve, SAT scores not withstanding. Regardless, this run first offense will be DOA unless the defense is feeling the same level of confusion I feel when my wife brings me seven different shades of off-white paint samples and tells me to pick which one feels the most beige.

Subjective Goal 2: Can our Defense Stop the Run

There have been many maddening trademarks of different Jets football teams over the last couple decades. Rex Ryan’s defense was an elite pass rusher or pass coverage safety away from being complete. They haven’t stopped a big bodied pass catching Tight end since 2015. Regardless of officiating bias and league scale tipping, roughing the passing penalties and indisciplined play has plagued this team. None of those flaws have felt as excruciating as the Jets inability to stop the run for the last two seasons. Getting their ass kicked in the trenches and making zero adjustments game after game would make me apoplectic, if this team hadn’t already turned me into a numb shell of a man. Acknowledging their absolute  failure to stop the run means one must also acknowledge that their “top” passing defense is more than likely a statistical sham based on the limited need for other teams to throw the ball. Compounding this a revamped secondary where our arguable best defensive back for last 4 years has left to find greener pastures. In fairness, there is no point worrying  about a questionable secondary when your defensive front is flimsier than  a Real Housewife’s apology after she was caught on a hot mic bad mouthing the entire cast. You aren’t going to go fix your leaky roof while  the house is being carried away in a flood.
*Sorry about the Housewives analogy to anyone who didn’t get it… still trying to get my wife to read this blog three years in.*

Subjective Goal 3: Can you limit the embarrassment 

I’m not asking for much this season. Some creativity and thought on offense. Grit and intensity on defense. Discipline and effort in all three phases. I am so tired of the me first guys, the professional con men, and all the rest of the flash but no bang players that have plagued this team the last 15 years. All I really am asking is a team that punches about its weight a bit. A team that doesn’t blow over a third of their TOTAL  games in the second half and fourth quarter. A team that doesn’t kill momentum constantly by dumb penalties ( because they will be assessed killer penalties at times  by the refs, cause or no cause). Getting outcoached during the two minute drill. Showing up on toothpaste commercials while your toothless team is getting pasted on Black Friday. Having reports come out about your owner’s son telling your quarterback they sucked (even if a true statement). No random illnesses contracted by making out with people in college bars. No one punching their starting quarterback. No getting in fights with washed up late tv night hosts. Of all the things that will define success to me for this season, only talking about how they are actually performing in football is about 80% of the grade.

Based on my 30+ years of watching this team, it probably will be too much to ask. Oh, well. Football is fucking back baby. Crank the Autumn Wind 30 times in a row and roll the Rex Ryan Hard Knocks clip. Jets 24 Steelers 13. God bless us all.