Joe Camporeale/USA TODAY Sports
The Jets' loss to the Steelers is just another part of Gang Green's up-and-down season.
The proper course of action would be to petition the Surgeon General to attach a warning to the media coverage of the New York Jets. For this is not a quality issue. It’s a serious health concern.
When tone and content change drastically from week to week, bad things happen to those hanging on every word delivered about the Jets inside the Valley of the Stupid and other media precincts. Bad things. Like whiplash. Or schizophrenia. Or stress-related heart problems.
These serious, media-induced ailments can be traced back to summer. The only stock it put in Gang Green was laughing. Rex Ryan was “cleverly” referred to as Rexit, or Dead Coach Walking. Although he became mellow enough to suggest a computer chip was implanted in his brain, Ryan still had no chance of coexisting with new GM John Idzik.
By August Idzik was already labeled a bumbler by some. Those enrolled in the Mayock School of Communications described the GM as “just a cap guy” without the proper “personnel experience.” Then there was the Mark Sanchez-Geno Smith thing. And ESPN picking the Jets 32nd in the league (the genius football analysts in Bristol refuse to cop to that now) and well you get the picture.
The media set the floor below sea level. Stay cool, the history lesson is almost over. Gang Green would segue into its alternate win-loss universe. One week, the coverage was euphoric, like someone leaping a tall building in a single bound. The next it was like someone jumping off a cliff.
The media crashed after the 38-13 loss to Tennessee. After that fiasco, with Smith unveiling his own version of the butt fumble, Ray Lucas and Joe Klecko, on SNY’s Jets postgame show, walked to opposite ends of the emotional tightrope. In one breath they were preaching at a funeral; the next sounded as if they wanted to steal the corpse and drag it down Sixth Ave.
RELATED: NOT MUCH TO 'CRO ABOUT FOR JETS CB
Pity and anger carried the coverage into that Monday night in Atlanta. The Jets were advised by everyone, from Cris Carter to Cris Collinsworth, to conveniently get lost en route to the Georgia Dome. The Jets turned the doomsayers into believers (at least for a few days) with a 30-28 win. Once again, the pendulum swung. Man did it ever.
Smith was now on top of the world. It was his “coming out party” And damned if he didn’t show there was at least one New York quarterback who could still engineer a fourth-quarter comeback. Hallelujah, there would be meaningful games to be played the rest of the season.
Steelers 19, Jets 6.
Andrew Theodorakis/New York Daily News
Before the season starts, Rex Ryan is called 'Rexit' and 'Dead Coach Walking.'
That’s all it took for the familiar refrain of “same old Jets” to return to columns and flow from the mouths of talk radio Gasbags. Meaningful games? The football media decided it was best to advise friend and foe alike to deep-six any playoff talk.
Jets coverage has no middle ground. Much of this has to do with, up to this point, the team exceeding the subterranean expectations the media set.
Those expectations were highly dubious from the get-go. Those setting the bar so low, as usual, ignored the fact that the NFL is a league of mediocrity where any team with a pulse and a prayer can get good, or at least good enough to stay in the playoff hunt, in a hurry. Few covering the league, especially the highly paid analysts who work for the NFL’s TV partners, will acknowledge this. It would damage the brand.
RELATED: JETS INSIDER: MEDIA MAKES REHAB SANTONI-SLOW
The Giants are the other inspiration for this feast-or-famine coverage. With Faded Blue looking up at 0-6 from inside the toilet bowl, it’s human nature for scribes to want the team they cover to be competitive. If the Giants and Jets arrive in Tap City by Thanksgiving not only do both teams become irrelevant, so do the people covering them.
For an 0-6 team the Giants haven’t taken much heat. Not only is the Charmin treatment about the two Super Bowls Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning (Is he still elite?) have banked, but Coughlin has been fired so many times by the usual media suspects they are reluctant to do it again. Instead of being hyper-critical of a team, they all believed would be in a position to go deep into the playoffs, the focus has been on how the Giants organization values continuity and how players are still listening to Coughlin as he tries plugging the dike.
The expectations have flipped. Now that the media are resigned to the Giants going nowhere, the focus is on getting that first win and where it might lead. If it happens on national television Monday night against Minnesota, the spin about the NFC East being so bad, giving the Giants a glimmer of hope, will be resurrected.
If the Jets fail against the Patriots, losing two weeks in a row, the coverage will be turned upside down. The trap door will open, and the situation will suddenly be portrayed as hopeless.
And if Gang Green wins, well, some clever scribe will suggest the Super Bowl countdown clock be immediately moved to the Jets locker room.
Is there a doctor in the house?
0 comments:
Post a Comment