Written by Daniel Krieg | 24 October 2009

 This has been a terrible week for Jets-Mets (and Rangers) fans.

 Anything you read or hear about the Jets is negative and does nothing to raise your self-esteem or happiness as a sports fan. On the baseball front, the Mets two biggest rivals, the Phillies and the Yankees, are on a crash course to meet in the World Series. 
If you thought watching the Giants-Patriots Super Bowl was painful, this will be infinitely worse. (I'm personally rooting against the Yankees, not for the Phillies, per se. My hatred for the Yankees is 13 years old; my hatred for the Phillies is 3 years old. And no Phillies fan calls in the FAN at 4 A.M. on Wednesdays to taunt Met fans. And more than anything, I hate seeing other New York teams succeed. It's for that reason I rooted for the Spygate Patriots verse the Giants.)

 As I watched the teams I hate succeed and the teams I love fail (the Rangers have lost two in a row), I wondered what do I have to look forward to as a sports fan. The Mets? Definitely not. They're a new ownership, new general manager, and new core of stars away from winning a World Series. The Rollins-Utley-Howard core has shat on the Beltran-Reyes-Wright trio. The Rangers? Maybe. But they have some fatal flaws that will undoubtedly haunt them come playoff time (young defensemen; weak up the middle). And their franchise player, goalie Henrik Lundqvist, has yet to steal his team a playoff series in six tries.                                        (Mark Sanchez = Jaguar Paw; Bills = Mayan Captors)

 That leaves the Jets. The J-E-T-S, stinkin' Jets. It may seem hard to believe after the Bills Apocalypto-style conquering of Mark Sanchez last week, but Gang Green is our best chance at climbing the Championship Mountain in the next five years. They have a franchise quarterback (they do, I promise!), a competent head coach, the pieces for a great defense, two building blocks on the offensive line, a franchise wide receiver, and playmakers in the running game. And the NFL, more than any other league, is made for a wide array of teams to reach and win a championship.

 It may not happen this year, in fact, it definitely won't, but that's not the point. When the Jets named Mark Sanchez their starting quarterback after two preseason games, they declared him their quarterback of the future. Not their quarterback for the first half of the 2009 season, but their quarterback for a reasonably long, long time.

 The aberration that was Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco's rookie seasons created terribly unrealistic expectations for fans with rookie quarterbacks. As a rule of thumb, no rookie quarterback wins. No rookie quarterback has ever played or won a Super Bowl. Troy Aikman stunk his rookie year. John Elway stunk his rookie year. Terry Bradshaw stunk his first four years! (They own, what? Nine rings total?)

 And when you take away the top three receivers your rookie quarterback practiced with during training camp (Cotchery, Stuckey, and...Brad Smith?) and then throw him in the fire verse defenses who know his every intricacy, ranging from how big his pre-game poops are to which eyelid blinks the most during a game, well, you're setting him up for failure.

 With that said, I think the Jets and Mark Sanchez will rebound this week and beat the Oakland Raiders, 20-13. In fact, I think they'll beat the Dolphins next week, too. (The previous sentence may be deleted at halftime of Sunday's game). And you know what? If I'm wrong this week and next week, it doesn't matter.

 Jose Reyes and David Wright are not it. King Henrik is not it...yet. But Mark Sanchez is it! And so are the Jets.

 I may be crazy, but what choice do I have?

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