The Jets’ 20–17 win over the Bills on Sunday was the franchise’s most significant victory since Jan. 16, 2011. You know, the time they knocked the Patriots out of the divisional round of the playoffs.
Before calling this hyperbole, take a gander back at the last decade of Jets football. By the time we’re finished, I may have you convinced Sunday’s win was even more important for the overall course of the franchise.
In both cases, this was an outcome that helped a team outgrow a label, an old caterpillar cocoon that made it out to be something less than, now and forever. During the early 2000s, the Jets dealt consistently with the idea that they were intellectually inferior to the Patriots. At best, they were the buffoons who might trip into some measure of good fortune every once in a while. At worst, they were loudly irrelevant, the kind of team that could not even fail quietly.
