Fans of New York presents: Casey Halpern’s New York Jets Fandom
The start of my fandom began because of my Dad, who grew up as a die-hard Jets fan. Truthfully I was more attached to a specific player than a team when I was a kid, that specific player was Brett Favre. This made me a "Packers and Jets fan" for the first 10 years of my life. Once Favre retired for the first time, I was over the Packers and put my focus solely on the Jets. Coincidentally, a couple of months later, Brett Favre became a Jet. I think I was 13-years old at this point and that was when I became a die-hard football fan. Up until then, it was always Basketball and Baseball as my favorite sports, but that's what truly made me love the game. My favorite athlete coming to the hometown team that my older brother and Dad loved solidified it for me and set me up for a lifetime of suffering and disappointment!
It takes a lot of passion and perseverance to be a fan of this team. You will be suffering more than you will likely be enjoying your time supporting the Jets, so it takes a lot of willpower to stick with them through the good and the bad. In the movie Fever Pitch there is a scene in which one of the main characters' students asks him the following: "You love the (Red) Sox, but have they ever loved you back?" That's what I often ask myself about the Jets. I spend a lot of my time obsessing over this team with a lot of passion and love, as fans we are still waiting for them to just love us back. With that being said it does feel like our time is coming. I truly feel like this organization is on the right track. but we will have to see how it all unfolds.
Thinking back to one of the top moments of my Jets fandom has to be when I attended the 2015 Week 16 game against the Patriots. Ryan Fitzpatrick and the Jets won on a walk-off OT Eric Decker touchdown to improve to 10-5 and controlled their own destiny in Week 17. All they had to do was win Week 17 in Buffalo and the Jets were in the playoffs for the first time in 5 years. Of course, we all know how that story ended, the Jets never got off the bus in Week 17 and failed to make the playoffs. But I will never forget that game at MetLife Staidum the week prior. My good friend Tommy was kind enough to take me to the game with his brother and pops and we witnessed an all-time Jets game. MetLife was absolutely rocking! The AFC was wide open that year and you just had the sense that if the Jets were able to get into the dance, they truly could have made some noise. I really do believe that. Unfortunately, they laid an egg after such an incredible win and since then it’s been a lot of tough moments to follow.
I'll never waver with this team though, my loyalty to this team is pretty much unconditional. That's just who I am as a person, I was taught to always support my loved ones unconditionally. As I said, I am excited about the future of this team. We finally corrected our mistakes of the past few years and got rid of a horrid GM and Head Coach. We finally have a pairing that will be working in lockstep with one another and we finally have a proper reporting structure with the Head Coach reporting to the GM and the GM reporting to the owner. Also, how much worse can things really get for them? This team has been one of the worst in the NFL for a decade now and they have the longest playoff drought in the entire league! For the first time in a really long time, I am cautiously optimistic about the direction of this franchise. It may be time for this team to love us back.