How to help the Jets fans in your life deal with their confusing delirium amid the team's newfound success

Please forgive the Jets fans in your life for being a bit disoriented these last few days. You may have noticed they are not themselves, that their attention seems to drift to other matters during conversations or routine tasks, and that there actually is a tinge of pleasantness in personalities that tended to be prickly at this time of year in the past.

This is all normal and to be expected.

The Jets, you see, have a quarterback. Not just any quarterback but a proven winner who can take over games with a level of play that few teams and their supporters ever get to experience. For the first time in many of their lives, Jets fans have actual confidence, not the kind that has to be drummed up as false bravado but true expectations of success. And watching their team play, an activity that used to give them ulcers, now results in a strange emotional cocktail consisting of glee, relief, joy and optimism.

In a bizarre twist, Aaron Rodgers has shown up, and after three games, it’s the forlorn fan base of the Jets that feels as if it is on an ayahuasca trip or has emerged from a darkness retreat that has lasted since Super Bowl III.

They are scarred, you see, from decades of being sold lemon players and coaches who never quite lived up to their hype, who were either just good enough to frustrate with their failure or bad enough to pucker with comic ineptitude.

Oh, there have been good, popular players in recent years. Jets fans loved Hall of Famers Darrelle Revis and Curtis Martin and embraced the pluckiness of Wayne Chrebet and the boyish early success of Mark Sanchez and the swashbuckling Rex Ryan, who talked the team closer to a title than he ever coached it.

They even had a year in which Brett Favre was their guy. He brought an instant of credibility that included a six-touchdown game before his arm gave out on the season and his heart gave out on being a Jet.

None of them ever gave what Rodgers did on Thursday night.

He took one of the most overhyped arrivals in New York sports history (and we have had a lot of those), stepped into a first home game almost a year and a half in the making, navigated through all the lump-in-our-throat moments of him running and getting tackled before we saw that he was able to get up on two strong Achilles tendons, trounced a long-time bitter rival, ushered Garrett Wilson and Breece Hall by the hand to the stardom status we always knew they had in them, and didn’t just live up to the blinding expectations that were set in front of him but somehow exceeded them.

And then he shrugged most of it off, said he thinks he and the Jets can do better, and went home to rest up for the weekend before getting ready to face the Broncos next Sunday. He even turned what looked like a typical Jets keg of gunpowder — an apparent shove of the head coach that could have easily destroyed all the good work — into a comical anecdote that illustrated a bond rather than a breaking point.

Every note of his symphonic performance was in glorious tune, a foreign experience to ears so used to the jabbing sharps and out-of-place flats they had been listening to and been told was how the music is supposed to sound.

Now the fans know better. Now, too, they have to navigate how to deal with it.

The best advice you can give to these folks who are walking among us with their bright eyes and goofy smiles? Tell them to enjoy these moments and stop worrying about the ones from the past and the ones to come.

Suggest they not worry about all the foibles that have gobbled up these good sentiments throughout the years, the Butt Fumbles and A.J. Duhe interceptions and fake spikes and Vinny Testaverde Achilles tears. Put out of their mind even last year’s litany of disasters that included Rodgers’ quick exit and the backup whose name we won’t subject them to having to read in print here and the Hail Mary returned for a touchdown. Beg them to stop being hung up on trying to erase the “Same Old Jets” part of their heritage. Nothing Rodgers accomplishes this season will erase any of those times or the pains they caused.

Then discourage them from looking too far ahead.

Yes, Rodgers already has spoken about the ultimate goal of playing in and winning the February game in New Orleans. That’s fine because he’s the Master of Manifestation who already has won a Super Bowl and four MVPs, and he’s allowed to do that. The rest of the Jets have not yet earned that right. Nor, certainly, have the Jets fans. So make them quit glancing down the schedule and planning the season out like a cross-country family road trip. “If we get to Week 8 at 5-2 and then can be 8-5 heading into the final stretch, we should be able to win the division and then . . . ”

Stop them. Please. Don’t let them micromanage this thing to death. Having eyes buried in the road map or on the lookout for must-hit mileposts means they’ll miss all the beautiful scenery along the way.

Finally, give them the space they need to work through all these new feelings that are coursing through them and no doubt confusing them. It will take some time for them to process what they witnessed on Thursday night. Let them do it in their own way, at their own pace. Grant them a leisurely Sunday this weekend as they tune in to watch other NFL teams scrambling to win with inferior quarterback play and come to grips with this reality that they are no longer of that ilk.

It’s going to be a long season. There are going to be downs and ups, wins and probably losses too. Maybe losses too. Not every game will be a 24-3 laugher the way Thursday was. But we’ve seen the Jets fans through many a campaign, helped them deal with their annual cycles of torment and regret and embarrassment.

Together we should be able to get through the unique challenges of this season too.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

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.