The New York Jets can be relied on to disappoint their fans. It is their fate, and they have been doing it, consistently, ever since they won that Super Bowl in 1968. The one that changed professional football. The one where “Broadway Joe” Namath promised that the Jets, representing the upstart American Football League, would defeat the mighty Baltimore Colts and their quarterback, Johnny Unitas, who was considered by many to be the greatest of all time. And, of course, Namath delivered. The NFL was forced to sign an armistice and merge with the AFL. Namath was named the game’s Most Valuable Player. The merger happened. Super Bowl III was the dawning of a new age in professional football. (READ MORE: Fans Are Tuning Out on Woke Sports)
That is the legend and as the line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence would have it, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
The Jets did win the game, but Namath’s boast was made almost offhand to a bothersome Colts fan. It was no line in the sand. And Unitas was injured and did not play until late in the game by which time the Colts were desperate. It took another AFL Super Bowl victory, after the next season, to accomplish the merger.
Still, it was a great moment (if not a great game) in football history.
And Jets fans have been wandering in the desert ever since, searching for that second Super Bowl appearance and win.
They have been through many coaches and many quarterbacks in their quest. They came close some seasons but never could get to the big dance.
In many of those other seasons, however, they were merely awful.
But their fans stayed with them. As much for who they were not as for who they were. They were, like the old Brooklyn Dodgers, the team from the “other borough.” Which is to say, they were not the football equivalent of the baseball Yankees. Proud, rich, and haughty. Playing in the splendid “House that Ruth Built,” which made their home, Ebbets Field, look like a tenement in comparison.
The New York football Giants are not the Yankees of football but they did win four Super Bowls as the Jets struggled. Two of those wins were against New England teams with Tom Brady at quarterback. Which might as well count double.
In 1976, the Giants moved from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx to landfill country outside of town which they called “The Meadowlands,” and built an elegant new park there.
The Jets, meanwhile, remained in Queens, at Shea Stadium, until it became almost uninhabitable. Then they made a deal. They now play, sort of like renters, at the Meadowlands at what is called “Met Life Stadium,” which is the Giants’ home park. There is talk of building a stadium of their own, back in town. But for now, the Jets are the only NFL team without a home of their own.
They were, like the old Brooklyn Dodgers, the team from the “other borough.”
One more reason, perhaps, for their fans to crave a Super Bowl win, which was the 22nd anniversary of that awful day.
Those Jets fans believed — and others around the country believed — that this was going to be the year.
The Jets had signed Aaron Rodgers in the off-season. He was to be the missing piece. And he surely had the résumé. In an 18-year career with the Green Bay Packers, he had won a Super Bowl and had been named Most Valuable Player four times. He was the quarterback the Jets needed. The one who would take them, at last, to the Promised Land, aka the Super Bowl.
On his fourth play, he was sacked. He got up tentatively. Then went back down. A sure sign that he knew.
He was taken to the locker room and word came out that it was an “ankle injury.” Turned out it was his Achilles tendon. And a body part may never have been more appropriately named.
After those four plays, Rodgers was through for the season.
Still … the game went on and the Jets hung in. They were still within striking distance in the fourth quarter. Then scored a touchdown to go ahead. But they left their opponents, the Buffalo Bills, time enough to score. Touchdown to win; field goal to tie.
The Jets defense forced a field goal attempt.
The kick looked, for an agonizing moment, like it might go wide. Then, it struck the upright.
For a moment, Jets fan believed it might bound their way. Just this once.
But the ball went over the bar and the game went into overtime.
“How much of this,” Jets fans had to be thinking, “must we endure.”
They kicked off in overtime. If the Bills scored a touchdown on that first possession, they win.
But the Jets held and the Bills punted.
Perhaps the gods felt they had tormented the Jets and their fans enough for one night. A Jet returner with the first name of Xavier (which night have sounded pleasing to the gods) took the punt and ran it all the way in for the Jets victory.
In a post-game interview, he said he had done it for “ARodge.”
And with that, the gods called it a night.
