Josh Curtis

Sunday’s 24-17 loss to Chad Pennington, Bill Parcells and the Miami Dolphins saw a bitter and ironic end to perhaps the most disappointing seasons in Jets history. It’s tough to tell, of course; there’s ample competition for that title. But for a team that jumped out to an 8-3 record on the strength of a 34-14 win over the then-undefeated Tennessee Titans in Nashville, the death spiral seen over the last five weeks will almost certainly carve a special niche.

And now that the Jets are dead, it’s time to begin where too many Jets seasons seem to end: with second guesses and prescriptions for better luck in the future.  read more »

Four weeks removed from establishing themselves as the team to beat in the AFC by virtue of a 34-13 thrashing of the then-undefeated Titans in Tennessee, the Jets are all but dead following an abysmal 13-3 loss to the Seattle Seahawks yesterday afternoon in Seattle. The Jets' slim playoff hopes are now contingent on defeating the Miami Dolphins next week and hoping that the moribund Buffalo Bills somehow earn a victory against the red-hot New England Patriots: an unlikely scenario, to be sure. And so what's in the offing now is not simply the biggest collapse seen outside Shea Stadium; it's the manifest failure of the Mangini regime.  read more »

Bear Stearns. AIG. Citigroup. Ford. Chrysler. General Motors. The New York Jets.

Yesterday afternoon, and with time running out in yet another near-certain fiasco, Abram Elam and Shaun Ellis secured a bailout: a shocking 31-27 win over the Buffalo Bills at the Meadowlands.

With just minutes left, yesterday’s game appeared a lost cause for the Jets. For the third straight game, the Jets’ glaring inability to slow opposing offenses had pushed them to the precipice of disaster. They had allowed 27 points to a Bills team that had managed a grand total of two field goals in its previous two games. They had allowed Bills running back Marshawn Lynch to embarrass them by bursting through half-hearted arm tackles and carrying Jets defenders for yards at a time.  read more »

Outcoached. It’s often a trite criticism; something to be cast off into the vast sea of sporting clichés alongside staying within yourself and taking it one day at a time.

But not here. And not for the Jets, whose agonizing 24-14 loss to a 4-8 49er team yesterday in San Francisco leaves many questions but yields one conclusion: They’re one of the worst-coached teams in the league. Of course, neither that nor the full extent of their other problems figures to see the light of day during any of the Pravda-style press conferences sure to follow this week in Florham Park, but it’s true just the same.  read more »

Last week, an upstart team packed its backs and traveled to play the conference-leading Tennessee Titans when few supposed it had any realistic chance of success. As it would turn out, the upstarts destroyed that Titans team, embarrassing it before its hometown crowd by a score of 34-13 and, in the process, securing for itself its new identity, equally coveted and dreaded, as “the team to beat.”

That team was the Jets. And after their celebrated destruction of Tennessee, it was said of the Titans that they had become too fat and too satisfied with their own success to appreciate the threat that a rising Jets team presented.  read more »

If last week’s heart-stopping overtime victory in Foxborough was the last step in an exorcism, then yesterday’s landmark, franchise-altering 34-13 victory in Tennessee may well have been the first step in a coronation.

Not in the last twenty-five years have the Jets performed so remarkably in a game of such monumental proportions and when so few afforded them any realistic chance to win.

With just a slim one-game advantage over two divisional rivals, the Jets traveled to Nashville to face a 10-0 Tennessee Titans team featuring the league’s top-ranked defense and a raucous home crowd clearly energized at the prospect of an undefeated season.  read more »

In recent weeks, as Brett Favre’s infamous penchant for interceptions became even more pronounced, speculation grew in contrarian circles that the Jets may have made a mistake in acquiring him, that the Dolphins had ultimately been the grand-prize winners in the Brett Favre sweepstakes, and that the Jets would have been better served had they held fast to the steady but unspectacular hand of Chad Pennington rather than leave their fortunes prone to the often-schizophrenic whims of a 39-year-old quarterback who, they said, had selfishly come back to play out the string for no other reason than to shame his former team for not bending to his every want.  read more »

Just one week after the New York Jets turned in their most complete performance of the season in a 26-17 win over the Buffalo Bills, some wondered whether the team was not ripe for yet another letdown against the seemingly rejuvenated St. Louis Rams, who had won two of its last four games after a dreadful 0-4 start. In truth, all the classic indicators were in place: an exuberant victory in the preceding week and a crucial game against the New England Patriots on the near horizon. The Jets, it seemed, were in for trouble. After all, this is the same team that squeaked past a winless Bengals team before collapsing against the Oakland Raiders and then allowing Chiefs quarterback Tyler Thigpen, he of the 42 passer rating, to push their season to the very brink of oblivion.  read more »

With eight games gone by and half the NFL season now complete, the New York Jets, whose season teetered so precariously on the precipice of doom not two short weeks ago, now enjoy a distinction that they haven’t known this late in any season since 2002: first place.

After a spate of curiously underwhelming performances against an assemblage of league doormats including the Bengals, Raiders and Chiefs, the Jets turned in their best, most complete performance of this 2008 season, defeating the division-leading Bills 26-17 at Orchard Park and securing a three-way tie atop the division along with the Bills and Patriots, who fell to 5-3 by virtue of an Adam Vinitieri field goal that propelled the wounded Colts to an 18-15 victory last night in Indianapolis.  read more »

The New York Jets’ 2008 season might have remained plausible even if they had not overcome a porous defense and three Brett Favre interceptions to defeat the Kansas City Chiefs 28-24 yesterday afternoon at the Meadowlands.

But it would have been a close thing.

For the third time in as many weeks, the Jets were faced with a serendipitous opportunity to right their tattered ship against a listless bottom-dweller, and for the third straight game, they parlayed their good fortune into a bizarre misadventure fraught with curious play-calling, poor execution, and maddening self-sabotage. This time, it was against an abysmal Chiefs team so decimated by injuries and inner turmoil that it was forced to start Tyler Thigpen at quarterback.  read more »

There are some well-known guarantees in life: death, taxes, the sun’s rise in the East. And then there are those less-momentous but nevertheless predictable events. Under this second heading we may well file the annual self-destruction of the New York Jets, who yesterday cast prosperity aside en route to losing a nearly unlosable game to an Oakland Raider franchise so backward and beset by its own mismanagement that it had replaced the Jets, if only for a time, as the resident laughingstock of the AFC.

In a manner eerily reminiscent of similar episodes in the past, the Jets entered the game with high hopes fueled by two consecutive victories and a professed belief in the growing chemistry of the team.  read more »

The first quarter of the Great Brett Favre Experiment drew to a close with team headed into a bye week at 2-2. And if, as head coach Eric Mangini maintains, the bye is reserved for unsparing honesty and brutal self-assessment, then this is the prefect time to offer some suggestions as the team readies itself for the remaining 12-game push.

Commit to a throw-first offense.  read more »

Lingering doubts about the Brett Favre acquisition were silenced yesterday afternoon amid a record-breaking barrage of touchdown passes, as the resurgent New York Jets defeated the Arizona Cardinals by a score of 56-35 at the New Jersey Meadowlands. Capitalizing on an uncharacteristically aggressive game plan, Favre connected on a career-best six touchdown passes, propelling the franchise to its greatest offensive output in 23 years and pulling the team’s season back from the brink of oblivion. In many ways, yesterday’s game was a microcosm of a storied career marked by headstrong misadventure and stunning, overwhelming redemption, all within the span of minutes.

On the team’s second drive, and after an uninspired three-and-out to start the game, Favre took the snap on third and one from the Cardinals’ 48.  read more »

Yesterday, after a summer spent pumping iron and running laps, the fat kid with glasses returned to school a slimmer, more muscled challenger to his fair-haired tormentors. There would be no more spit balls in his hair now. No more “kick me” signs on his back or hours spent trying to escape the inside of a gym locker. No, the order of things would be different this time.

The bullies would be vanquished; the triumphant nerd, carried shoulder high by his adoring peers and then set down before the girl who never knew his name. All that lay between him and his new identity was the small matter of doing it, of meeting the varsity quarterback in the alley after school and letting him know there was a new world order.  read more »

Brett Favre is the new quarterback of the New York Jets.

By yesterday morning, the initial hype and speculation surrounding a potential Favre trade to the Jets had long since given way to shrugging resignation that he would be dealt elsewhere, most likely to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Perhaps, then, it was the sheer surprise of the midnight announcement that struck me most. Or perhaps it was my sudden appreciation that years of futility had rendered me so unwilling to believe in the first place. In either event, there was no mistaking the momentous thing that had just occurred: The Jets had engineered the biggest, most publicized trade in the history of New York football, acquiring Brett Favre from the Green Bay Packers in return for a conditional draft choice.  read more »

David Wright is miscast in a Met uniform.

His youth, affability and seemingly boundless enthusiasm are, by themselves, sufficient to draw a sharp contrast to the gaggle of older, often listless imports that surround him. Add the fact that he’s not only the best player on the Mets but also one of a scant few whose career remains on the ascent, and you begin to understand that by nearly every metric, Wright is the anti-Met.  read more »

This weekend, as Mets and Yankees reprised their biannual rivalry, the familiar summer smell of sizzling hot dogs and grilled hamburgers was trumped by the cloying stench of mutual desperation. After 40 games and more than $347 million in payroll, the Mets and Yankees entered the series a combined 40-42. Worse still, they saw their respective divisions led by the Florida Marlins and Tampa Bay Devil Rays, two teams whose payrolls rank last and next to last in Major League Baseball.

So what’s the problem?  read more »

On Saturday, the New York Jets used the sixth overall pick in the 2008 NFL draft to select Ohio State defensive end Vernon Gholston.

By most accounts, Gholston is a talented if somewhat inconsistent prospect who projects as a fine player in the NFL. Nevertheless, this weekend’s draft may ultimately be remembered less for the picks the Jets made than for the one they didn’t: Arkansas running back Darren McFadden. Despite the public-relations spin, the fact remains that the Jets desperately needed McFadden. Chad Pennington needed him. Kellen Clemens needed him. Eric Mangini, too. But above all, their bedraggled, tempest-tossed fans needed him. They needed him both to jump-start a moribund offense and to redefine a staid, faceless and increasingly boring organization. As is their wont, the Jets missed the opportunity, ignoring the overwhelming fan sentiment for McFadden. They knew better.  read more »

On April 26-27, the NFL will conduct its 72nd annual college entry draft. For the third time in five years, the Jets are the owners of a top-10 selection.

Here’s a look at their likely targets:

VERNON GHOLSTON, Defensive End, Ohio State

Last season, the 6’3” 266-pound Gholston followed his respectable 2006 season by shattering the Ohio State single-season sack record with 14. He turned in highlight-reel performances against Wisconsin (four sacks) and Michigan (three sacks) before impressing scouts at the famous Indianapolis Combine by running the 40-yard dash in 4.66 seconds and totaling a combine-best 37 repetitions on the bench press. Although he was primarily a defensive end in a 4-3 scheme at Ohio State, some feel that he may project as a 3-4 outside linebacker as well. He is considered a hard worker and a low character risk.

Why you want him:  read more »

By handing out nearly $140M in free-agent contracts this offseason, the New York Jets have sent a bold message to the rest of the league: they’re one of the worst-run teams in football.

Unsurprisingly, their moves have met with general approval in New York, where even the most ill-advised spending sprees are typically embraced with open arms by people who believe that buying is trying. Amazingly, the nearly endless array of high-priced free-agent flops over the last 15 years has done little to dent this illogic. Now, as then, the quick-fix allure of free agency remains strong.  read more »

When last we saw the New York Mets, they were a defeated, injury-laden bunch that had just completed a historic collapse. Worst still, they were rife with overpaid, underproductive mercenaries more notable for what they had accomplished on other teams than anything they had done for the Mets. Curiously, Met brass concluded that the solution to the team’s troubles lay in exchanging most of the organization’s top young prospects for even more mercenaries. The net result is that owner Fred Wilpon and GM Omar Minaya have placed a large wager on what is, in some respects, the same horse that failed so miserably in 2007.
 read more »

As the Jets and Chiefs trudged through yesterday’s season finale amid freezing rain and a sparsely populated crowd, Chad Pennington stood stoically on the sideline, donning a team-issued raincoat and watching his heir apparent, Kellen Clemens, struggle to muster 13 points against a Kansas City team that entered yesterday’s contest having lost eight consecutive games.

And so it had come full circle for Pennington, whose star-crossed tenure as the Jets’ starting quarterback began in the fourth game of the 2002 season, when he faced the same Chiefs team at Giants Stadium.  read more »

On Sunday afternoon, the Jets will close out their most disappointing season in recent memory when they face a hapless Kansas City Chief team at the Meadowlands. And unless you’re motivated by lingering resentment stemming from the sudden departure of Herman Edwards in 2005, chances are that you’re going to have a difficult time finding reason to watch the last scene of a rather tired act. The bad news, of course, is that the Jets’ season has been lost for two months. But here’s the good news: like virtually every other NFL team, the Jets aren’t far removed from having a playoff-caliber club in 2008. Here’s how they can do it.  read more »

If there was anything remarkable about yesterday’s 10-6 loss to a profoundly mediocre Tennessee Titans team, it was the eerie similarity with which the usual events unfolded. Once again, the Jets found themselves in an eminently winnable game against a favored club. And once again, they self-destructed, throwing crippling interceptions, showing no credible running attack, allowing six quarterback sacks, missing field goals and extra points, and otherwise securing defeat where most clubs would have managed victory.  read more »

If the Jets had an eye on the second-greatest upset in franchise history yesterday afternoon, the stars were aligned. The weather was terrible; the field in Gillette Stadium was drenched; their spirits were high. And after the Patriots’ first drive ended in a rare punt, that faint glimmer of hope grew brighter.  read more »