New York Jets fans, do you copy? Over? Do you read me?
Perhaps it is only me, but I feel it worthwhile to throw this question out to you, the Jets fan reading this article. Have you felt what I’ve felt about the vibe surrounding the Jets’ fanbase throughout the 2025 offseason?
It’s been… quiet. Too quiet.
The same passionate, heated debates that carry most offseasons to the finish line have been absent. You know, those debates where one fan threatens to drive to another’s house because they disagree on who should be RB4.
The persistent complaining about moves and non-moves, and the constant debates over depth charts and position battles? Nada. The endless quest to dunk on ESPN analysts who underrate the Jets or use the wrong logo? Nobody seems to care anymore. Fans are absorbing the body blows and moving on with their lives.
Do you feel it? That sense of… apathy?
It feels like Jets fans, as a collective, care less about the team than they have in years. Obviously, this does not include everybody. We’re talking about a group that includes millions of people. Many fans are optimistic and excited about this season. You might be one of them.
But the overall vibe around the team – judging by the online hubs for Jets conversation, such as Twitter – is noticably lacking in passion compared to every other season in which I have covered or followed the Jets. Cumulatively, I feel as if the fanbase currently has a mentality directed toward the team that goes along the lines of, “We don’t care about you. We’ll care when you win.”
Given the results of recent seasons, it is an understandable mentality. The Jets have missed the playoffs 14 years in a row. No franchise in North American professional sports is on a longer playoff drought.
The apathy is especially understandable given what Jets fans just went through over the last two years.
After 12 straight non-playoff seasons, the Jets finally had a fool-proof plan that would assuredly get them back to the playoffs. They took a young, up-and-coming team that started 7-4 in 2022, led by an elite defense and multiple star-caliber weapons on offense, and they added Aaron bleepin’ Rodgers to it. A Super Bowl couldn’t be guaranteed, but the playoffs felt like a shoo-in.
The result? 7-10, 5-12.
After even that formula couldn’t get the team back to the playoffs (or even close to it), it is understandable why Jets fans feel hopeless and apathetic. They have entered “I’ll believe it when I see it” mode, unmoved by any supposed source of optimism that the team tries to sell them.
Simply put, Jets fans feel tortured by this point. They don’t want to inflict any extra torture upon themselves by raising their expectations too high, just as they did over the last two seasons. They’re tired.
But here’s the reality, Jets fans: Almost every NFL fanbase will tell you they are “tortured” and “tired.”
While the Jets have achieved a unique level of awfulness, every fanbase except for a select few feels similarly “tortured,” just by different standards.
The 49ers have excruciatingly struggled to get over that one final hump, losing three Super Bowls in the last 13 seasons. Their Super Bowl drought has now reached 30 seasons. That is well below expectations when much of your fanbase grew up watching the team win five Super Bowls in 14 years.
The Bills can’t get past the AFC championship/Patrick Mahomes hump.
The Cowboys can’t get past the divisional hump.
The Steelers can’t get past the wild card hump.
You don’t think these fanbases feel tortured, too? When you keep ramming into the same wall time and time again, it is easy to feel hopeless, even if that wall lies closer to the final destination than it does for many other teams.
All of these fanbases feel tortured in different ways. And, yes, I know what you’re thinking, Jets fans. You would be thrilled to deal with the so-called “torture” these aforementioned fanbases have dealt with. Three Super Bowl losses? Yes please.
I beg to differ with that line of thinking.
Give it one fun season of exceeding expectations, and things would immediately change. Sure, Jets fans would have a blast with that one season, even if it ended short of a Super Bowl. But, from there, the expectations rise, and as the expectations rise, the enjoyment falls.
Look at the Detroit Lions. For many years, they were the NFC’s iteration of the Jets. With a quick two-year turnaround, they grew into a powerhouse, making a surprise run to the NFC championship game in 2023. There, they lost in heartbreaking fashion to the 49ers, blowing a 17-point lead.
While that loss in San Francisco surely stung, it didn’t stain the season for Lions fans. It was a fun ride! The Lions were finally respectable! They established themselves as contenders! Woo hoo! They’ll be back!
One year later, the Lions improved again to 15-2. But they went one-and-done in the playoffs, losing at home to an upstart Commanders team that found itself in the same position Detroit was in the previous year – going from a perennial non-playoff team straight to the NFC championship.
Instead of enjoying a 15-win season, Lions fans are left in pain after watching their team waste a gaping window to win a Super Bowl. Sure, they had plenty of fun along the way, but the horrors of that divisional loss will always outweigh the 17 games that preceded it. Now, the Lions’ future is littered with question marks.
“The NFC North is stacked now. Did the Lions miss their window?”
“Can you get over the top with Jared Goff?”
“Can Dan Campbell be a championship coach without the excellent coordinators he lost?”
And until the Lions win a Super Bowl, their fans will never stop wondering what could’ve been in 2023 and 2024.
15 wins doesn’t sound too fun now, does it? It almost feels more like a devilish tease to torture Lions fans in a completely new way.
Let’s turn to the Commanders team that stunned Detroit. Any Commanders fan will tell you they had the time of their life watching the 2024 season.
But now the bar has been raised. For years and years, Commanders fans would have told you what Jets fans are saying right now: “I’d be happy just to win nine games every year instead of watching this slop.” Ask Commanders fans how they’d feel about nine wins today, and they would sing a different tune.
If the Commanders win nine games this year and fall short of the Super Bowl, I promise you right now what their fans will all be thinking, and it won’t be, “I am having so much fun watching this team be competitive instead of being a laughingstock!” the way it was in 2025. It will be more along the lines of:
“Is Dan Quinn the guy who can get us over the hump?”
“Can Jayden Daniels win you the big one?”
“We went all-in on this win-now window, and we didn’t progress! Now our future is compromised! Welp, we are screwed. Classic Commanders.”
You see the cycle?
Sports culture has become so obsessed with championships that fans have lost the joy in simply being a fan that made them want to start following the sport in the first place.
Back when you were seven years old, it most likely wasn’t the allure of winning a Super Bowl that provided the initial spark of your fandom. You probably watched or attended some random regular season game, and had the time of your life treating that single, relatively meaningless game as if that was the Super Bowl. And from there, you treated every game like it was life or death, even if the Jets were 2-10 and hosting a 4-8 Raiders team led by Kerry Collins.
The first NFL game I attended was a preseason game between the Jets and Eagles in 2011. While I couldn’t tell you a single thing that happened in the game, I remember being enamored by the sights and sounds of the stadium (gray and lifeless as the Meadowlands may be, but you don’t know that as an 11-year-old kid), and entranced by the physical chess match taking place in front of me on the field. From there, I was hooked.
Sports aren’t fun because of championships. A championship is the ultimate goal that pushes the plot forward, but the journey to get there is what drives the enjoyment.
What happens after your team wins a Super Bowl? Do you fold your arms behind your head, kick back on the deck of a yacht, and ride off into the sunset with your life fulfilled? Basking in endless bliss for the rest of your sports-watching days?
No, I’ll tell you what happens. You go to sleep that same night, on that same creaky mattress you’ve been dying to replace, but your wife actually thinks it’s just fine, so you put up with it. You wake up the next morning and repeat the same mundane morning chores, before you drag yourself to the same job you’ve had enough of. You enjoyed last night, and you might have a slight smile on your face and brag to some buddies at the proverbial water cooler, but the conversation quickly wanders from what was to what’s next. It’s not about the fact that your team is finally on top. It’s about whether they can do it again.
“Can they repeat?”
“Can they three-peat?”
“Is one championship enough to make up for everything we went through to this point?”
“Where does this championship rank among the last 10? Pretty low, I’d say, considering how weak their path to the Super Bowl was. They wouldn’t even have gotten this far if so-and-so didn’t get injured in the divisional round. I’m unmoved!”
Then, even when you get to two or three, the bar goes even higher.
“Is this the ‘GOAT’ team? Hell no. Do they even deserve to be in GOAT conversations? No, of course not – that’s foolish. How dare you put this team in GOAT conversations? Playing in that division, they have been handed a trip to the championship game on a silver platter for the last decade!”
Get all the way to seven rings, and nerds like me will still question your status as the GOAT.
The nitpicking will never, ever cease. The bar will never stop rising. Winning a championship is never enough.
It is not the cure-all that we treat it as. Sure, it’s wonderful – perhaps one could say it evokes a unique form of euphoria that nothing else in life can replicate (I couldn’t tell you, I watch the New York Jets). But it’s not… everything.
And it’s not just fans. This mentality affects players, too.
Just look at this quote from Jalen Hurts after he won this year’s Super Bowl. Instead of relishing in the victory as if it was the greatest moment of his life – which is the pedestal that fans, media, players, and coaches seem to put it on as they talk about it throughout the other 364 days of the year – Hurts was more happy about not losing than he was about winning.
This mentality summarizes today’s sports culture. Winning isn’t fun – at least, not fun enough to justify how much we, as a society, seem to care about it. Securing a title is not the real goal. The actual motivation is not losing – not leaving yourself vulnerable to the mountain of criticism, pain, and regret that will fall on your shoulders because you weren’t quite good enough.
We are beginning to see this in championship-winning players all across sports. Just look at how modest the Oklahoma City Thunder’s recent NBA Finals celebration was. They treated a title win like they just clocked out from their 9-to-5. And, sure, perhaps that is the mentality that got them so far. Maybe a workmanlike, endlessly unsatisfied approach is necessary to win a title.
But… you won the damn NBA Finals! Isn’t this everything to you? That’s what you’ve told us since you were drafted: “My No. 1 goal is to win a championship.” So, act like it! NHL players – who, it is very important to note, are significantly less social media and brand-driven than NFL and NBA players – still treat their sport as the childlike wonder that it truly is.
While this championship-or-bust mentality has embedded itself deep within today’s athletes due to the omnipresent pressure of social media, it permeates within fans, too.
Fans have lost the plot. They forgot why they started watching sports. Their over-obsessiveness with championships has created an inescapable feeling of hopelessness that they believe can only be cured by a title. But even when they get there, they will still find new ways to compare, compare, and compare some more instead of just enjoying the moment.
You see where I’m going with this? Putting the Super Bowl on a pedestal as the only thing that makes fandom worthwhile is a misguided mindset that spits in the face of the very essence of fandom. Nobody is making you watch. Yes, I know you will retort by saying that you “can’t stop now” and are “stuck for life,” but… yeah, I hate to tell you this: you actually can stop. You actively choose to keep watching. So, if you’re going to make that choice, why not just enjoy the ride?
Let’s bring it back to the Jets in particular. All of this is not to say that Jets fans should happily gobble up the team’s annual losing seasons without reacting. It is ridiculous that Jets fans should exclaim, “At least we had fun!” after the team goes 5-12 again. Losing stinks. And when your team loses this much, the emotional toll adds up. I get it.
Sports fans deserve better than what the Jets have given theirs. I am not saying Jets fans should continue buying hordes of tickets and merch, and just smile in blissful ignorance as their franchise continues its extended stay in the NFL’s gutter. That is not the point. If you aren’t reacting angrily to the losses, then the joy of winning cannot be equally as powerful.
However, I don’t think that the Jets’ ineptitude should prevent fans from enjoying the beautiful side of the NFL’s cyclical nature. Guess what? The Jets are tied for the NFL’s best record. They’re undefeated. Nothing but possibility lies ahead.
I know, I know: you’ve heard this spiel for the last 55 seasons. You’ve grown weary of the projections and predictions. You want results, not hope.
But you know what else? Hope is what makes fandom worth it. Hope is the only thing that matters.
31 franchises won’t win the Super Bowl this year.
31 won’t win it the following year.
On average, an NFL team has to wait 32 years between Super Bowl victories. Even if the league had flawless parity, alternating championships each year in a perfect cycle that allotted one championship per team, there would still be three fanbases forced to wait at least three decades for their next ring.
I hate to break it to you, but there is a decent chance the Jets will not win a Super Bowl in your lifetime. Even if they do, it will probably be a while. And this isn’t Jets-driven pessimism. It is basic logic regarding a goal that can only be achieved by 1 out of 32 teams each year.
As one of 32 teams, there is an implied 3.125% chance of the Jets winning the Super Bowl in any given season. If you run 50 attempts to achieve a 3.125% outcome, there is still a 20% chance of it not occurring a single time. That’s before adjusting for the fact that they are the New York Jets, which means their actual chances in most seasons will probably be lower than 3.125%.
If we place a Jets tax and reduce the Jets’ yearly chances to, let’s say, 2%, their odds of failing to win at least one Super Bowl in the next 50 years would skyrocket to 37%.
So, what is the motivation to watch something when the entity you are rooting for has such a low chance of accomplishing the ultimate goal?
Hope.
The idea that your team could win the title is more important than actually winning it. It’s what makes us want to go to games. It’s what makes us want to turn the TV on. It’s what makes us want to dive so deep into analyzing the roster in the dead of summer that we break down the film of a run stuffing nose tackle or unpack the minutiae of a UFL kicker’s analytical profile.
Don’t lose that passion. Don’t lose that hope. Enjoy the journey. Enjoy the communal aspect of being a fan – the memories and relationships made along the way. Enjoy the analytical aspect – the fun of diving into the game’s finer points, breaking them down, discussing them, and learning more about the game from others.
There is so much more to fandom than the ultimate goal of winning a title. If you fall into the trap of viewing a title as the ultimate goal, your expectations will never stop rising until the team gets there, and it will be an endless cycle of disappointment that only subtracts from your life. Sports won’t be fun until you stop setting expectations and return to the core elements of fandom that initially made you sign up as a 7-year-old.
And, to be clear, I do not think a single Jets fan in the world has championship expectations this season. It is a wise, realistic approach, and one that should allow fans to enjoy this season more than the last two.
But that enjoyment can only happen if they stay invested. It feels as if many fans have swung too far in the opposite direction of championship hopes, opting instead for total apathy. Fans were all-in on July depth chart debates when they thought Aaron Rodgers had them in the Super Bowl conversation, but now that the title hopes are gone, Jets Twitter is nothing but crickets. Why should analyzing the team be any less interesting now than it was then?
Part of this may have to do with transitioning from the drama-filled Rodgers era to the radio silence of Aaron Glenn and Darren Mougey’s approach. Still, it feels like much of the fanbase is content with staying in hibernation until the sun comes up on the Jets’ title hopes. While I understand this perspective, I can’t lie: it feels lonely out here in Jetsland. The insatiable hunger for analysis and conversation is gone.
The Jets are 0-0. A new season is upon us. Football is fun. Fandom is fun. Being a part of a collective group of hopeful people is fun.
The very last thing that a sports fan should be is apathetic. Once you fall into apathy, fandom becomes a chore, not a hobby.
Be angry. Be upset. Invest your emotions into this bumbling team from East Rutherford every Sunday.
Just don’t stop caring.
If you insist on not caring, it might be time to hang up the Shonn Greene jersey and find a new Sunday hobby in the fall. Apple-picking is a hoot. There are always leaves waiting to be raked. An extra pair of hands would be appreciated for the weekly Costco run.
Okay, never mind – Jets vs. Jaguars it is.
Avoid the apathy and enjoy the ride, wherever it may lead.