Welcome back to “Why Are We Still Watching?”, a highly irregular Monday-morning postmortem between long-suffering Jets fans (and New York Magazine staff writers) Gabriel Debenedetti and Simon van Zuylen-Wood. After weeks of texting about the team’s bleak season but not mustering the strength to live-chat about it, they reunited to recap yesterday’s dismal 30-0 loss to the Miami Dolphins.
Simon van Zuylen-Wood: We have returned! We last convened in week two, a whole 13 NFL weeks ago. Back then it was September, and we were processing our grief over the injury that seemingly ended Aaron Rodgers’s season, and the Jets’ championship aspirations. But unlike the people who program the NFL’s prime-time schedule, we chose not to burden you with more Jets content … until now. So why are we “Why Are We Still Watching?” Last week, our frenemy Zach Wilson, who replaced Rodgers as the Jets’ starting QB, had the game of his career. Then, Rodgers was improbably cleared to play, and the Jets now have a few days to decide whether to activate him for the season’s waning weeks. It seemed like our team, and maybe this dialogue, might just be relevant again.
Gabriel Debenedetti: Simon, let’s not traffic in false hope. After yesterday’s debacle, the team is officially out of playoff contention, and Rodgers almost certainly isn’t coming back next week, even after his perhaps dubious medical miracle. Our endeavor, of course, has always been about something slightly bigger than Ws and Ls; it’s about the unique New York experience that is Jets fandom in 2023. But before we think big, can I just get mundane? What on earth happened today? Right now, I’m on a plane and haven’t been as tied to my TV as I’d have liked …
SVZW: And last week, you were on a vineyard in rural Uruguay and missed the game but for the single photo I took of my television. If you try to explain why you were in Uruguay, I will delete.
GD: —
SVZW: What you need to know is that Sunday’s game started a promising 0-0. Then, on the Jets’ first offensive series, Wilson got strip-sacked while retreating toward his own goal line under pressure — I almost wrote moving Zachwards, which is in fact exactly right. Soon it was 7-0, then 10-0, then 17-0, and by the end of the third quarter I had left for a holiday party.
GD: At some point, you texted me about Tony Romo’s commentary.
SVZW: Romo is the NFL’s best announcer, and I realized partway through the game I had no idea he was doing the game, because I was listening to the soundtrack of A Charlie Brown Christmas instead of the play-by-play.
GD: Sounds like a lovely afternoon at the VZW household but a desultory football experience.
SVZW: I’m looking at my game notes for more talking points. Wilson left the game with “dehydration,” which actually turned out to be a concussion. We had “negative 12” passing yards around the half. What else? Oh, the Dolphins coach. Not an ordinary-looking pro football coach. What do you know about him?
GD: He is quite an interesting character, but I won’t indulge your mid-game musing, via text, about how “our coach could beat up their coach.”
SVZW: He’s very slight and cerebral-looking.
GD: This kind of gets at something that’s been bugging me. One of the big promises of the Jets this season was that, if nothing else, they would be interesting.
SVZW: Which I guess is why poor Tony Romo was stuck announcing this game.
GD: Rodgers even seemed like he would play into that promise from the sidelines, with his experimental rehab. But that shtick got old after so many weeks, and we were back to the usual story lines about the benching and unbenching of Zach Wilson, and soon it became obvious that even the miserable Giants had more going on story-line-wise.
SVZW: Tommy Cutlets!
GD: I know from tristate-area Italian superstars, so let me handle this. Tommy DeVito is this come-from-nowhere kid who’s emerged as the Giants’ metropolitan idol–slash–starting quarterback.
SVZW: A literal Italian hero.
GD: His primary claim to fame is that he still lives at his parents’ house and his mom does his laundry. Secondarily, his fedora-wearing agent dresses like a cartoon character. Stevie Van Zandt thinks he looks like Silvio Dante, his Sopranos character.
SVZW: He looks like if Vinny from Jersey Shore were doing a Rat Pack tribute night in Atlantic City. He looks like Carmen San Diego’s younger brother. He looks like —
GD: You done?
SVZW: Tommy Cutlets — I actually don’t know why they call him that — is also a nice corrective to the Nickname Death Valley of Modern Sports. Instead of anything clever, you get initials and truncated proper names: “KD,” “AD,” “A-Rod.”
GD: Well, in American sports at least. Soccer still has plenty of good nicknames. On this one-year anniversary of my beloved Argentine national team winning the World Cup, I’m thinking of how that squad boasted “the Butcher,” “the Spider,” “the Bull,” “Egg,” “the Atomic Flea,” and, amazingly, “Noodle.” Is Boomer Esiason the last Jet with a memorable nickname? He played for them when I was 3 …
SVZW: Is it just … “Boomer”?
GD: Yes, Wikipedia tells me his real name is Norman Julius Esiason.
SVZW: Curtis Martin. Wayne Chrebet. Keyshawn Johnson. Vinny Testaverde. Santana Moss. Zero nicknames that I can recall.
GD: Revis Island! There’s one, kind of!
SVZW: Kind of.
GD: GREG “THE LEG” ZUERLEIN.
SVZW: Nice!
GD: All, uh, legends. No memorable nicknames. So, you know, increasingly remote is the dream of the charismatic New York superstar — as we discussed last time we did this — at least on the Jets.
SVZW: Speaking of Broadway Joe Rogan — you’re welcome — what is the status of Aaron Rodgers’s love life? Someone was asking me recently if he and Shailene Woodley were still dating. Alas, they’re not — they broke off their engagement last year, and it’s disappointing to me that in the age of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, he hasn’t been “linked” to anyone notable as a Jet.
GD: Taylor Swift’s entrance to the scene has been one of the NFL’s main selling points this year, ever since the league tried and failed to get fans excited about the Eagles’ use of a successful but ultimately banal play that people decided was interesting because they called it the “tush push.” Truth is the Jets haven’t really been interested in pushing Rodgers’s celebrity except for occasional recovery updates, even though he’s been trying to play up his role as a main character of modern American life on ESPN’s sleeveless programming every week.
SVZW: This is a reference to Pat McAfee, who used to be a punter in the NFL and now has a show on ESPN, where he wears a black tank top. Rodgers is friends with him and frequently drops by to tantalize Jets fans with details of his Achilles rehab. There’s now a whole genre of Jets coverage that involves reporting miraculous things Rodgers did during noncontact practice, including awestruck quotes from his teammates and coaches. Gabe, do you want to see A-Rod come back this season?
GD: On the merits, no, it makes no sense. I mean, why would he? They’re not going to make the playoffs, so why risk reexploding the tendon? But none of this is rational to begin with, so: yes. And here’s why: This team had so much going for it at the beginning of the season. Yes, Rodgers was the final linchpin, but the squad was full of young stars and real chemistry and excitement, and drawing a ton of eyeballs. Now, everything about it is just a big blah. (Thanks for reading!) So a jolt of energy, even if it means nothing in terms of actual results, would probably be good for the rest of the players and — especially — for fans who so far have suffered through a weird gap year with nothing gained and very little actually lost, too. (Except a lot of games.) Right?
SVZW: Yes, agree. Let him play. If he reinjures himself and ends his career, we get closure. If he stays healthy and makes some pretty throws, we get fleeting joy. Fleeting joy for the holidays.
GD: You didn’t get fleeting joy from the Butt Fumble–esque interception over Thanksgiving? An instantly iconic moment in which the Jets tried for a halftime heave at the end zone only to have the Dolphins (them again!) return it the entire length of the field for one of the most pathetic surrendered touchdowns of the modern era. Some called it a “reverse Hail Mary.”
SVZW: It was so very Butt Fumble–esque for me. As with that play, I didn’t see it happen, was in the other room enjoying my holiday weekend, and learned about it via the hideous guffaws of my family members, who are Patriots fans.
GD: Wait! The Butt Fumble was Mark Sanchez! Holder of a nickname! The Sanchize!
SVZW: Good catch! A few weeks ago, I picked up the New York Post, and for some reason, they published a ranking of every Jets quarterback in team history. Sanchez, who led with charisma rather than accuracy in the halcyon Rex Ryan years, came in fourth. My favorite part of the list is that Rodgers, with his zero completed passes as a Jet, wasn’t ranked last.
GD: So, wait, why are we still watching?
SVZW: That feels like asking a person of faith why they worship. Or Charlie Brown why he lets Lucy hold for his placekicks. It’s such a big question …
GD: I guess I’m not really watching these days.
SVZW: I might not have watched if we didn’t tell our editor we’d write this. Though I still think watching the Jets is more compelling than the average New York Times “Sunday Routine.”
GD: Same time next weekend?
SVZW: I’ll see you at the watch party in Montevideo.
