Brash Jets have embraced the role of NFL's villain
Jets head coach Robert Sale h speaks at the team's practice facility in Florham Park, N.J., on Thursday. Credit: Ed Murray/Ed Murray
FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — Hate the Jets yet?
Sick of hearing all about them?
Tired of all this talk about them — and from them — as they strive for the Super Bowl with the quarterback who has come here to turn 54 years of history on its helmet?
Perfect. Because that’s exactly what they are going for.
They clearly don’t want to be the “good guys” in any scripted narrative this season, the Little Engine that Could team that wins over the hearts of America with pluck and charm. When they imagine themselves in victory, and make no mistake they do so a lot, it’s not with a smile afterward or even tears of joy. And it’s not with relief having snapped a half century of misery for the franchise.
It’s with a nasty, ugly, flesh-spitting snarl.
They are not looking for your love.
They want just the opposite.
“I always look at the '80s Niners who were hated, the '90s Cowboys who were hated,” coach Robert Saleh said on Thursday. “Everyone has hated the Patriots over the last 15 years. When I was in San Francisco we hated the Rams. Well, it’s because they win. They’re doing something, so there is a lot of anger and hate toward them. It’s always been that mindset that if people are trying to poke holes in you it’s because you are doing something well.”
Jets saturation definitely has reached the backlash phase as the regular season commences. Right on schedule for them to revel in their ruthlessness. They may be Gang Green, but they want everyone else to feel the envy.
“I guess,” Saleh added, “I look at it as: If you can’t keep our name out of your mouth it must mean we’re doing something good.”
The issue right now is that they haven’t. Not yet. And until they do, it’s just arrogance without a resume. There are are few things as revolting as that in any walk of life.
Jets fans are eating it up, naturally. They’ve been kicked around a lot. It’s nice to be the kicker for once.
But that emotion the rest of the league has toward them isn’t quite hatred. It feels more of a wait-and-see slow nod of anticipation for all of the hype and hysteria over this one team going kablooey as it has so often.
The world seems more poised to laugh and mock the Jets than tremble in fear at the sight of them.
Saleh knows this, too.
“We haven’t done anything,” he said. “We still have a lot of football games and in two years we’ve been here we won 11 of them. I do think we’ve done a really nice job and positioned ourselves to have a good year. But we still have to go out and do it.”
That begins against the Bills on Monday Night Football. Until then — and probably after then no matter what the result — don’t expect the brash yammering to end.
Dalvin Cook, the new guy around here, was asked if he likes all the overt talk about the Super Bowl.
“Why not?” he said with surprise. “That’s where we’re trying to go.”
Well, can’t a team be too confident? Shouldn’t there be some humility?
“To me, that ain’t gonna dictate if we win or lose any football game,” he said. “Going out there, going on the green grass, that’s what dictates it. I love the confidence we have in this locker room and we shouldn’t shy away from that.”
Rodgers, who has been talking about adding to the Jets’ singular silver statue in the trophy case since the literal moments he walked in the door of the team’s facility, reiterated the method behind his messaging.
“A part of that is speaking things into existence, the idea of manifestation,” he said on Thursday. “And the other part is a realistic look at the locker room knowing that there is anywhere from six to 12 teams every year that can probably do it and we are one of those six to 12 teams.”
Oddly enough, if their forced appearance on “Hard Knocks” did anything for them and their image, it cast Rodgers as a more likeable figure than most anticipated and a sage leader. The rest of the team — Saleh in particular — were turned into blustering F-bomb-dropping bullies.
Even in defending his and his team’s swagger against the idea that they paint a bull's-eye on themselves — things like the talk earlier this week comparing the defense to the '85 Bears and the wall in the building that will chronicle each week of the coming season which is divided into enough segments to reach the middle of February — Saleh came across as confrontational.
“I don’t think teams look at another team having confidence in itself as a rallying cry,” he said. “If they are, they’ve probably already lost. That’s my opinion. A team is supposed to have confidence in itself and if you think that’s a thing you need to rally your troops around, then you guys are struggling.”
The Jets — not the media, not the fans, not any of the other 31 teams in the NFL — have put themselves on the slender stilts upon which they are currently balanced, teetering between balance and disaster. They have deftly and defiantly positioned themselves as villains out to avenge generations of mistreatment and misery to their peoples. It’s all been done by design.
They’ve managed a really good job of it, too, to the delight of their supporters and the annoyance of nearly everyone else.
They may not be hated by the league just yet. But if they have any measure of success this season, these past few months of Jets hubris have pretty much assured that they will be.
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.
