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Same old .Seasons come and seasons go. As do players, coaches, owners, stadiums and Fireman Ed. Everything changes. Everything, except the . For the past 45 years, they've remained the one New York team you can trust above all others to break your heart. (That's a pretty big achievement in a market that also houses the Mets and Knicks.)This is an organization forever chasing its own shadow. Back in January of 1969, Joe Namath guaranteed victory over the powerhouse Baltimore , then backed up his boast with a win that changed football forever. III can never be taken away from the franchise, but that conquest has had the adverse effect of adding extra sting to all that's followed.Even Namath himself wasn't immune from the perverse funk that's lingered in the organization like a drunk Meadowlands tailgater who can't find his van. Namath's prime was significantly truncated by a string of injuries -- his body so beat up that a doctor told him he'd have the knees of a 70-year-old by the time he turned 40. (Sure enough, Namath eventually had both knees replaced.) Everyone knows Broadway Joe's finger pointed skyward at the Orange Bowl, but most don't realize the had just one winning season for the rest of Namath's career in New York.One popular bit of folklore has it that Namath signed a deal with the devil prior to III, trading a single momentous victory for an eternity of organizational suffering. This is kind of insane, sure, but not totally implausible when you look at the since 1970. No trips, two division titles in 45 seasons and an 0-4 record in the AFC Championship Game. There's no post-Namath glory, Cade York Jersey only A.J. Duhe, O'Brien over Marino, Belichick's betrayal, third-and-6, the Butt Fumble, Doug Brien, Vernon Gholston, The One They Call Kotite and, yes, Tebowpainia.Now how could the scaly, clawed mitt of the wretched Beelzebub not be somehow involved?Full disclosure: I'm a fan. I was at the Fake Spike Game, where I watched apoplectic fans tear up their Johnny Mitchell giveaway posters in protest as they exited Stadium. I've had pa sionate arguments with my father about the relative merits of Ray Lucas. I named my dog Boomer after a quarterback who went 15-27 with the team. I bought multiple Chad Pennington jerseys under the sincere belief he was the AFC East's best quarterback (in a division with that Brady guy!).Football is my busine s, but the are personal. I like to think their perpetual failures have helped build my character on some level. At least that's what I tell myself as I wait for the Same Old to crash and burn forever. Gang Green's eternal struggle lands them at No. 2 on the Pain Rankings.Pain RsumPatron Saint Of Pain: Bill BelichickIn which we choose the figure who best represents the suffering ..."I resign as HC of the NYJ."In one terse sentence, Belichick delivered a me sage that would reverberate with the franchise for years to come. He scribbled it on a piece of loose-leaf paper, handed it to team president Steve Gutman, then stepped to the podium to announce he was leaving the after one day as head coach in January 2000. Belichick followed that with a rambling, 30-minute monologue in which he attempted to explain why he wouldn't serve as the succe sor to Bill Parcells, a plan that had been in place since they came to New York together three years earlier."I just don't feel I can lead the in the year 2000," in a surreal pre s conference at headquarters. "I just know what I need to do. I just don't feel I can do it right now."Belichick said he was uncomfortable with the ' unsettled front-office situation following the recent death of longtime owner Leon He s. But, in true Belichick fashion, there was more to the story.Weeks of drama followed. Belichick was coveted by the , but was still under contract with the . Parcells, acting as the ' director of football operations, wasn't about to let his best employee walk to the team's biggest rival without compensation. Belichick, in turn, filed an antitrust lawsuit against the NFL. Eventually, Parcells and owner Robert Kraft brokered a deal and Belichick dropped his lawsuit. He was introduced as the ' coach on Jan. 28, 2000."I didn't resign to get to this spot," he said during a conference call that night. "I resigned because I wasn't comfortable with the situation with the ."Fast forward 15 years. Belichick has gone to the six times with the , winning four Lombardi trophies. The -- deficient for 45 years and counting -- have had a front-row seat for all of it.Apex Of PainIn which we study the lowest point in franchise history ... {"adConfig":{"preroll":{"ciuSzs":"300x60,1x1","descriptionUrl":" ","frequency":2,"iu":"/4595/nfl.com/news/article/around-the-nfl-news","partner":"","s1":"news","s2":"pain-rankings-no-2-the-new-york-jets-0ap3000000502936","s3":"around-the-nfl-news","s4":"article","teams": "NE","NYJ" ,"test":"","url":" ","vid":""}},"analytics":{"reportSuite":"cbsnfl","pageDetail":"pain-rankings-no-2-the-new-york-jets-0ap3000000502936","siteName":"nfl.com","siteSection":"news","siteSubsection":"news"},"autoplay":false,"clubs":false,"playlist": {"audio":false,"description":"New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez fumbles the ball in the most awkward of ways after running into his own teammate on Thanksgiving against the New England Patriots.\n","duration":0,"gameday":false,"id":"01565838-9938-4a4c-bc16-33f3304e5487","entityId":"01565838-9938-4a4c-bc16-33f3304e5487","slug":"mark-sanchez-s-butt-fumble-against-patriots","title":"Mark Sanchez's 'Butt Fumble' against Patriots","posterImage":" ","imageSrc":" ","campaignId":"","category":"","mcpID":"438694","videoSource":"nfl.com","tags": {"title":"New England Patriots at New York Jets (2012-REG-12)","slug":"ne-nyj-2012-reg-12","gameId":"10012012-1122-0287-4286-27a6cb34e02b"},{"title":"New England Patriots","slug":"new-england-patriots","teamId":"10403200-69ab-9ea6-5af5-e240fbc08bea"},{"title":"New York Jets","slug":"new-york-jets","teamId":"10403430-1bc3-42c4-c7d8-39f38aed5f12"},{"title":"New York Jets","slug":"new-york-jets-vc"},{"title":"yahoo in game","slug":"yahoo-in-game"} } ,"playlistVideoIndex":0,"playerType":"video","productId":"LEAGUE","loop":false,"live":false,"defaultMuted":false} The have suffered plenty of lo ses more damaging than what happened on night in 2012. But nothing before or since ever packed as much pound-for-pound humiliation as The Butt Fumble.The play -- tucked into a flurry of New England first-half scoring during a 49-19 defeat -- served as sort of a line of demarcation for the franchise. Before the play, the were seen as a flawed-but-respected team with legitimate playoff bonafides. But after slammed into the posterior of guard Brandon Moore? The were a laughingstock. It took a long time for the circus to leave town."I gue s (I was) more stunned than anything," Sanchez told The A sociated Pre s days later. "Just like a car accident. I was like, 'Whoa. What just happened?' Then, the ball's gone. It was weird."It was the beginning of the end for the Sanchize, who was hammered on a national level for his gaffe. Rex Ryan, who called Sanchez and wrote that he planned to have Sanchez's draft card framed in his home one day, benched the quarterback le s than a month later. Sanchez started just four more games in New York, his departure hastened by a season-ending shoulder injury the following preseason.The play damaged Ryan, too. The brash coach took the to back-to-back AFC title games in his first two years, turning him into one of New York's biggest sports figures and a me sianic figure for the fan base. But the Butt Fumble served as Ryan's unofficial induction ceremony into Same Old University. Ryan's firing after this past season was the product of a lot of shortcomings in recent years, but the Butt Fumble represented the beginning of the end.Sanchez, now with the , tried to put the experience in perspective during an interview with Fox's Erin Andrews last November."I ran into a guy's butt on national TV. ... At the time, it was horrible," he said. "Not just embarra sing horrible, but we were already getting beat ... they scooped and scored. It sucked."The Hurt FilesIn which we study some other deeply punishing low moments ...O'Brien over Marino: The held the 24th pick in the 1983 . When Dan Marino was still on the board, team officials should have been dancing on the New Jersey Turnpike to celebrate their good fortune. Instead, they took Ken O'Brien. Marino went to the three picks later and proceeded to throw 420 career touchdown pa ses -- or 292 more than Ken O'Brien. The have made plenty of draft day mistakes -- just ask the mongos on the second and third levels of Radio City Music Hall -- but pa sing on Marino was the nadir.Speaking of Marino ...The Fake Spike Game: On Nov. 27, 1994, the and met at the Meadowlands with first place on the line. The opened up a 17-0 lead, but Marino led Miami back. With 27 seconds to play and the well within range for a gam Julian Good-Jones Jersey |
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