Falling short of super expectations? Jets have case study in Mets
Joe Douglas, Aaron Rodgers, Robert Saleh and the Jets hope to have a better time pursuing a championship than Max Scherzer and Mets GM Billy Eppler did in Queens this summer. Credit: Howard Schnapp; Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke; Jim McIsaac
FLORHAM PARK, N.J.
Standing on the Jets’ practice field on a gorgeous Sunday morning, watching Aaron Rodgers sling the football and Dalvin Cook make up his mind, if you peered out to the east, you could almost see the smoke. It was rising from the rubble and ruin, the smoldering wreckage of another team a few rivers away figuratively scorching the awesome blue sky.
It was the Mets.
A team that, like the Jets, put everything they had into this season. A team that, like the Jets, brought in future Hall of Famers to throw things. A team that, like the Jets, assembled a roster they thought would finally end a decades-long stretch of trophy droughts and the often mockable efforts that had gone toward doing so.
And in the last few weeks, a team that has watched all of it burn.
That hasn’t happened to the Jets yet, but it should serve as a pretty big warning of just how quickly things can turn.
They play a different sport, obviously, with varying reasons for success and failure. There are roughly 10 regular-season baseball games played for every one in football. The money is spent at a different pace, too, with far different repercussions on not only the current season’s fiscal agility but the nimbleness with numbers in the near future.
The Jets, therefore, could simply be bystanding rubber-neckers as a team they once were stadium-mates with — when they were much younger and living in Queens — collapses in on itself.
These Jets are being built to win. And yes, they actually may do it. They certainly have a better chance to do so than they had in any other training camp this century. They keep trying to add to their chances, too, most recently by wooing Cook to the team facility. Signing a Pro Bowl running back to an already impressive assemblage of talent could be the kind of daring move that pushes them to a title.
Or it could be one move too many.
Sean Payton was out of line for most of what he said about the Jets and new offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett. He since has apologized for much of it, although it didn’t sound like that was accepted when Rodgers put him on blast Sunday afternoon.
The one thing Payton did get right was that the team that “wins” the offseason rarely wins the actual one.
The Jets are trying to do both.
It’s a long way down from the altitude at which these Jets are cruising, and brother, there ain’t no parachutes on this plane. If things go awry, say goodbye to a lot of the folks who have made these plans.
General manager Joe Douglas and coach Robert Saleh won’t survive it. Rodgers’ newfound lust for living and playing in the region almost certainly will peter out. And the core of young players the Jets have for the next few years, including Sauce Gardner, Garrett Wilson and Breece Hall — will they want to stick around on second contracts with a franchise that will be re-re-rebuilding? Probably not. Kiss them goodbye in free agency.
The Mets at least are getting prospects from their current situation. The Jets gave theirs up in the trades they made to get here.
At least the Jets seem to be aware of the dangers of playing fantasy football with an actual football roster.
“You’re not trying to build a team of names,” Saleh said last week of any big moves made or contemplated. “You want to make sure that it fits, and I feel like that’s what we’ve been able to do a really good job of. We’re not trying to build a ‘dream team,’ but making sure that everything fits for a reason . There’s a purpose for what we’re doing. And [we’re] being very cognizant of not getting caught up in fan noise and pulling in names just to pull in names. A lot of discussions have been had. A lot of film has been watched on Dalvin, and if it fits, it’s because we know it’ll fit. It’s not just to make a move to win the offseason.”
The Mets and Jets share many fans in the area. They also share a psyche. They have, for much of their history, shared a mix of bumbling ineptitude and no-cigar heartbreaks. They share three letters, for crying out loud, a typo away from being one and the same franchise.
This season, the Jets have a chance to sever themselves from those bonds that have long haunted both organizations, that have uncannily linked their fates for generations.
Or they could be next in a long line of examples of grandiose plans gone amok.
The all-too-familiar smoke billows on the horizon.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
