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New York Jets are Shortchanging Their Fans

It’s nice to say you’re rebuilding. Fans like it. I would have been fine with it had that been the plan all along. It wasn’t. Jets GM, Mike Maccagnan spent money at the beginning of his tenure. A lot of it was bad money. The results were bad so the team is now doing a “quiet” rebuild.

The Jets had the 8th highest ticket prices in the NFL last season. If you own these seats you’re taking a bath on the secondary market. What doesn’t make sense is the Jets are 24th in spending. That’s not a good equation for the consumer unless you have a team packed with young talent, and that’s not the case with the Jets. They have some good young players but not enough of them. Not yet.

The Jets are worth $2.75 billion dollars. So why have a QB like Josh McCown, driving the bus? The team is ranked 7th in the NFL in worth and fans will be treated to 3 wins this season if they’re lucky.

McCown is a good guy. He’s classy. He knows how to lose and he’ll win the job out of camp because the Jets haven’t been able to draft a quarterback. This has been their biggest problem since I’ve been a fan. I’ve seen Namath win it and everybody else lose. Even if the Jets draft first or second next year, how confident can I be that they can identify a franchise quarterback? It’s a fair question. Fans must hope.

McCown, 38, knows how to lose. He’ll lose with class. He won’t make waves and that’s what the Jets seem to want. I’m not advocating locker room fights but I’m looking for a team with some real competition in camp and the one position they won’t have that is the most important position.

The Jets were 1-15 in 1996 under Rich Kotite. They were awful. Nobody wants to say they could achieve with record with the amount of money that is being spent. It’s bad for the league. McCown won’t talk about the obvious. Head coach, Todd Bowles won’t. Nobody will.

In 1997, the draft was bad. They got James Farrior 8th, (who Bill Parcells later moved out, another bad move) instead of drafting Orlando Pace first overall. The Jets made bad deals as they moved down in the draft. They compiled 11 picks and the other notable players picked were Dedric Ward, Leon Johnson and Jason Ferguson. Do we trust this regime to draft any better?

Every year the Jets get a B or C grade and they’re lucky if they get two decent players out of it. The 2016 draft is no exception unless something special happens this season with a few of these players. Until this gets corrected the rest of the equation doesn’t matter.

The Jets have failed in free agency so now they’re turning to the draft to fix this franchise. If that fails then it’s more of the same. No playoffs, not a lot of hope, and a lot of frustrated, loyal fans.

Russ_Cohen
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