Who WERE those men in black?

They couldn’t have been the New York Jets, could they?   The same team that got spanked by the Falcons and humiliated by the Patriots?   No way.   I mean, they did things the Jets have not done all season.   Scored in the first quarter.   Took the lead.   Got first downs.   Throttled one of the highest scoring offenses in the NFL.   They ran, they passed, they scored.   And that quarterback who came off the bench, four years in the NFL and never started a game before… or even played, till last week.   Mike White?   Is that his name?  I doubt that even Fireman Ed knew it till last week.

But every Jets fan knows it now.   He passed for 400 yards!  Against a tough Bengals D.   No Jets quarterback has passed for 400 yards since Vinnie Testaverde, back in the dawn of time.   Chad Pennington never did it.  Mark Sanchez never did it.  Fitzmagic never did it, Geno never did it, Sam Darnold never did it.   Mike White did it.   He bounced back from a hellacious hit too.   And he caught the two point conversion on a trick play.

I love this guy.   He was everything Zach Wilson and Sam Darnold were supposed to be, but weren’t.

I know, I know.   It’s Halloween.   This must be some kind of trick.   I will wake up tomorrow and it will be Halloween all over again, and the game will have been a dream… a nightmare for Cincy.   Then I will have to watch the real game, and it will be a horror.

But meanwhile… what a treat!

The Jets should wear those black uniforms every week.

And Zach can take his time recovering.   Please.   I want to see if White is real (please please please please please).

Meanwhile, life is marvelous and full of joy.

Current Mood: giggly

Well, this Sunday was somewhat better.

The Giants won one, at least, defeating the Panthers and Sam Darnold… who got benched before the game was over.  Maybe the Jets did the right thing letting him walk after all.   The final score was pretty lop-sided, but only because Big Blue came on hard in the fourth quarter.   For most of the game it was 5-3.   Yes, really.   Daniel Jones looked good… as a receiver as well as a quarterback… but the win really belongs to the defense.   Let’s hope they can do it again.  (Though next week could be MUCH harder).

As for the Jets game, the less said, the letter.   Not a defeat, a humiliation.   Our kid QB looked awful, and then he got hurt.   Now he’s out two to four weeks.   Mike White, the guy who came off the bench, had never played in a regular season game before, but he threw a touchdown with his first pass.   All in all, he actually looked better than Zack Wilson.   Which did not help much, since the Pats were scoring every time they touched the ball.   I see that the Jets just traded for Joe Flacco today.   Whether to back up White or to replace him, I am not sure.   Was Flacco the best option, though?   They could have signed Cam Newton off the street, no draft choices required.

Guess we will find out.

Right now, looks like the Jets will be picking second in the 2022 draft.   Maybe first, if the Lions ever win a game.

Life is… well, mostly wretched, but once every few Sundays they let you win one.

Current Mood: discontent

Well, at least the Jets did not lose this weekend.

They had a bye.

The less said about the last two Giants games, the better.   It does not help that half the team seems to be injured, including half the offensive line and most of the top wideouts.   We had a rookie who was flashing some great moves at receiver, to be fair, but now he is hurt too.

The past few years — maybe longer than than, the months and years have been flashing by in a blur and I have lost track — I have pretty much forgotten what a “day off” looks like.   I have so much to do, so many projects, books and films and television shows, even a railroad, that I have been working seven days a week for longer than I care to remember.   EXCEPT during the NFL season, when I take Sundays off to watch the Jets and Giants games.   Sundays used to be a nice restorative for me.   The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat… usually, with two teams, there was a good chance that at least one of them would be competitive.

No longer.   The Jets and Giants are both awful, and the rare signs of progress (like two weeks ago) always prove illusory.

I do not have the energy to dissect games like today’s Giants loss to the Rams.

Life is miserable and full of pain.

Might as well work.

Current Mood: depressed

Gasp.  And gasp again.

Hey, hey, what do you know.   The Giants WON!  And the Jets WON!   On the same day.  Both in overtime.

Of course, the NFL and DirecTV had both games on at the same time, which meant I had to record them both and spend all day switching back and forth between them, while falling further and further behind.   I also had to avoid looking at the scores at the bottom of the screen, lest one game spoil the other, or vice versa.  Both teams entered the day at 0-3, and I had every expectation of them ending it at 0-4.   The Giants had played pretty well through those first three losses, losing the last two on last second field goals as time expired, but they were playing the Saints in the Superdome.  Even without Drew Brees, the Saints are a pretty formidable team, and more so when at home.   As for the Jets, well, they were in Jersey against the Titans, and the Titans are no powerhouse… but Gang Green had looked so absolutely wretched in their first three outings that I figured we’d get crushed anyway.

The way the Jets game opened, it looked like my fears were well placed… but in the second half they came alive, and HOLY HELL our kid quarterback (who has a helluva arm, even if he does look as though he is straight out of high school) started heaving bombs down the field.   To JETS receivers, not the other team.  And suddenly we were winning.   Then, of course, with a game almost won on a 4th and 10, we committed a killer penalty and almost blew it, and the Titans tied it up and sent it into overtime and Parris was charging up our home defibrillator.   My teams have a way of stopping my heart.   (That’s a joke, guys.   A joke.   I feel compelled to add that, for fear of what kind of headlines you might see on the clickbait websites elsewise).

But then, after snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, the Jets went to overtime, won the toss, marched the ball down the field, and snatched it right the hell back.   Whoeee.   A VICTORY!   After last year, Jets fans had mostly forgotten what that felt like.

Meanwhile, over on t’other channel, the Giants were doing the same thing.  That game started tight, with the G-Men holding up well against the New Orleans O, but then the Saints started pulling ahead and I started feeling gloomy.   But NO!  The Giants came back, and Danny Dimes had the best game of his career, making some heart=stopping heaves and earning his nickname.   Could we possibly have turned a corner?  Oh, that would be sweet.   It is only one game, of course… but if Daniel Jones can keep it up, Blue could well get Big again.

Oh, and the throws that Zach Wilson made… DAMN, what an arm.   So that’s why the Jets took him.   He keeps that up, he’ll need a nickname too.  The BYU Bazooka?   Mad Bomber 2.0?  Zach the Cannon?   Some of his heaves took me back to the heyday of the AFL, when Broadway Joe and Darryl Lamonica were firing balls fifty yards downfield.

All in all… a much sweeter Sunday than the last few.

And the minions all went wild.

Life is magical and full of joy.

This week, at least.

Current Mood: bouncy

Well, that was a kick in the balls.

I really thought that the Giants and the Jets would be much better this season.   They had (I thought) strong drafts and good offseasons.

A week and a half into the new season, they are a combined 0-3.

Life is meaningless and full of pain.