WORST TO FIRST?
Tanking Jets have early opportunity to show lost year won’t be a total disaster
O RCHARD PARK — Look, it is a ridiculously small goal to achieve. It would mean nothing. It would mean less than nothing. And even if it happened, the Jets’ reward probably would be a few extra helpings of abuse this week, because that seems to be the fate of the 2017 Jets: They’re like the unused treadmill in your house that has become a destination for used shirts and pants. They are [stuff] catchers. And yet … This actually is within the Jets’ grasp by the close of business Sunday:
They could very well hold first place all by themselves in the AFC East.
It is only through a couple of quirks that this is even possible, of course. The Dolphins are s ure to be 0- 0 after Week 1, because the horrific power of Hurricane I r ma canceled their game with the Buccaneers. The Patriots are already 0-1 because the Chiefs walked into Gillette Stadium and ignored the local statutes that require opponents to morph into jelly-kneed patsies at the mere sight of Bill Belichick.
That means that the winner of the Jets-Bills game Sunday afternoon at New Era Field is assured of waking up Monday morning alone atop the AFC East. That is hysterical on one level, because if there is one team in the NFL that has been clearing the decks and hoping for the worst this year with an equal fervor to the Jets, it is the Bills. They are the AFC’s Twin Tankers. And one of them will get to spend at least seven full days calling themselves a first-place football team (barring a tie, of course). Yes, it is meaningless — the Patriots probably will find a way to keep from going to pieces pretty quickly, and the Dolphins are leaps and bounds better than both teams, and the cream rises in the NFL faster than in any other sports league in the world. Still … “We don’t worry about outside noise,” Jets coach Todd Bowles said earlier this week. “We have a job to do and that’s to win football games. Whatever anyone else says it has no effect on us. We’re here to do our jobs.”
The issue, of course, is what exactly that job is supposed to be. By all reasonable measure, the Jets have been built with an eye on a calamitous today in the hopes of delivering a prosperous tomorrow. The Jets won’t admit to that because they can’t admit to that. And even the most stubborn Jets fan seems to have reluctantly concluded this is the only path to take.
Still, there is always room for good news, for hopefulness, even if comes doled out in teaspoons. One of the things that is interesting about the Jets is to look at the way their schedule is designed.
These things are always an inexact science, of course, because so much of the NFL’s middle class is a muddled mess. Still, unless the Jets are going to be 0-16 — and as bad as they’ve looked at times in the summer, it is still an extraordinary thing to go winless for a full season, which is why just three teams have done it since 1944 in non-strike years — there ought to be someone they can beat.
And all of those opportunities look like they’ll present themselves between now and Nov. 2: two games with the Bills, one at the Browns, one at home against the Jaguars. Honestly, even a Jets fan hoping for the worst probably would not mind finding three wins there — 3-13 is as good a bet at landing one of the college quarterbacks they crave as any other. And 3-13 doesn’t carry the stigma of 0-16 or 1-15.
So if they’re going to win any, why not this one, which will carry the extra benefit of one-week bragging rights in the AFC East? It remains a shocking thing just how infrequently that ever has happened, after all, just two — two! — division titles in the 47 years since the merger. It will be fleeting. It will mean nothing. Less than nothing.
Unless you’re looking for microscopically small steps. And if nothing else, those are exactly the things the Jets ought to be looking for this year. Why not shoot for this small measure of achievement?
[Stuff] happens, after all. Even for [stuff] catchers.