We Will Not Soon Forget This Jets Team

Leave 'Em Laughing

The idea that the Jets were, in Week 15 of the season, still competing for a playoff possibility, is plainly absurd. But when it comes to this trainwreck, it barely comes in the top 5.  Here's a quick list.

5) The Thanksgiving game against the Patriots, where the team barfed up 28 points in a sequence that was on YouTube with a carnival music background before I could finish the post about it

4) Bart Scott raging against the press, the fans, and anything else that was dumb enough to get in the same zip code

3) Mark Sanchez nearly leading the league in turnovers, despite being at the helm of a run first, second and third offense, and losing the occasional snaps to sideshow QB Tim Tebow

2) The entire Tebow experience, which has gone beyond surreal and straight into performance art, perhaps as a grand statement on how much ESPN will debase itself for ratings, and

1) Tonight's game, where the Jets, down 4 with 2 minutes left, saw Sanchez throw an inexcusable pick with just under two minutes left... then get a shanked punt to take possession at the Titans 25 with 47 seconds left, only to botch a shotgun snap on the first play from scrimmage to blow the season. No, seriously.

And yet, all of that pales in comparison to actually *watching* this team. Maybe it's the strength of schedule, or how awful the AFC East has become. but the ugliness of their games has been infectious; games either become defensive slopfests or outright comedy. And it's true that defensive teams are like that, and teams in media markets are like that, but man alive, is this team just something else.

Now, I have no idea what should be done here. The ownership is as much of a soap opera as what's on the field, since they brought in Tebow strictly to sell tickets and merch to idiots and donated big money to a presidential candidate that most of their fan base despised. Their best running back tonight might have been Joe McKnight, who they tried to make into a cornerback earlier this year, when they lost Darelle Revis. That's only after humiliating him for the benefit of HBO a few years ago. The offensive line has gone from dominant to downtrodden in two years, and Mangold's bad snap on the final relevant play of the year was far from his first mistake. And the team is mostly older, with a win now Now NOW! approach, no matter how plainly insane that is in a division where the Patriots are just light years ahead of them.

And tonight, they nearly won a road game that would have prolonged a playoff bid into week 16.

Worse yet... some part of me is kind of bummed that they didn't get the W, just so we could see what this would look like with, well, more time and pressure involved...