These are not your parents’ Jets and, they hope, not your slightly older cousins’ Jets, either. A mere 12 years ago the club assembled a superteam unable to contain its obvious volatility. The combination of LaDainian Tomlinson, Plaxico Burress, Derrick Mason, Santonio Holmes and Bart Scott melted down into charred rubber live on the final Sunday of a lost 2011 season.
It was, perhaps, the messiest eight-win season in recent NFL history due in part to the expectations preceding the meltdown and the city in which it took place.
This time, the hope is that lessons were learned, or inherited through some kind of organizational osmosis. The 2023 Jets are the most star-studded team in the NFL again, and they just added the biggest free agent remaining on the market before the start of the regular season.
