This is the kind of game, the kind of night, if you are a sports fan — a real one, a legit one, with skin in the game and a dog in the hunt and a heart fully invested in a team — that explains all of it, the whole bag. This is why you care. This is why it matters. This is why you come back. Again. And again. And again.
This is why: Jets 22, Bills 16.
All of it. Every second. Every emotion. Every ridiculous swing and sway of emotions, every swatting of your nervous system. You can’t help it. If you care — if you truly care — this is the why. This is the high and the low. This is the agony and the ecstasy. This is wanting to ball up in a corner and cry at 8:30, and wanting to scream till you’re hoarse by 11:15.
“You are always trying to win,” Robert Saleh would say at the end of the most absurd, ridiculous, heartbreaking and fascinating day in the Jets’ 63-years of absurd, ridiculous, heartbreaking and fascinating days. “Always. Always.”
There was an actual rainbow that stretched above the MetLife Stadium sky as the minutes ticked off to kickoff, and if you believe in such ethereal things, you had to be happy. And then there was Vinny Testaverde trotting onto the field as an honorary captain before the coin flip … and be honest: when you see old No. 16, the first thing you probably think about is him grabbing for his Achilles tendon on the awful afternoon of Sept. 12, 1999.
One especially cynical long-time observer of the Jets texted this earlier in the day: “Here’s the key over/under tonight: 22 minutes, 48 seconds.” That was the length of Testaverde’s 1999 season.
Rodgers’ lasted 19 minutes and 28 seconds less.
“He went down, and our eyes met,” said Breece Hall, who enjoyed a spectacular return to action with 127 yards, 109 of them coming on his first two carries. “And I just kind of looked away.”
Everyone did: all 83,345 inside the stadium, all of the other 51 Jets in uniform, all of the coaches. There were some hopeful words thrown out there: “ankle,” for one, and “X-rays negative.” But even before the amateur doctors on social media’s diagnoses actually matched up with the real ones, one word stuck in everyone’s head: Achilles.
“It doesn’t look good,” Saleh said, and in those four words he confirmed an entire fan base’s worst fears.
So there was that: the dizzying high of kickoff, followed less than 10 minutes later by a descent that nearly caused the bends.
And yet there was more.
There was the Bills merrily racing to a 13-3 lead, and a night after Giants fans had watched the Cowboys roll to a 40-0 win on this same field it seemed the Bills were prepared to be equally obnoxious guests. But a funny thing happened. Josh Allen wasn’t his A-game self — helped along by a Jets defense that harassed him all night, forcing three picks and a fumble.
More astonishingly, Zach Wilson — whose first several series looked an awful lot like most of his series last year, which is the reason acquiring Rodgers became such a necessity — began to resemble the protégé of which Rodgers seemed so proud during the preseason and when he connected with Garrett Wilson on a permanent highlight-reel TD connection with less than five minutes to go, MetLife let loose a cathartic, extended roar.
And that only multiplied when the Jets forced a fumble and took a 16-13 lead.
“We’re a resilient team,” Wilson said. “And we have resilient fans.”
And yet … and yet. There was more. There was a 50-yard field goal by Buffalo’s Tyler Bass that started to drift left, quickening pulses, and then doinked the left goal post, eliciting roars … and then bounced through the uprights. Of course. A night that had begun with despair was now sure to end with despondency. Fun gig, being a sports fan.
And then … and then. The Jets forced a three-and-out in OT. Xavier Gipson — Rodgers’ most prominent “Hard Knocks” co-star, the cameras following his quest to make the team as an undrafted free agent — fielded a punt. He saw an opening. He saw another. He bolted toward the sideline. By now every one of the 83,345 could see he was two moves from the unthinkable. He made one of those moves. He made another.
Jets 22, Bills 16.
“Hard work paid off,” Gipson said with a smile.
And as they left the stadium, or clicked off the TV, Jets fans had to feel like they’d put in a full day’s work, too. Sports isn’t supposed to be life and death. It just feels that way sometimes when you have skin in the game and a dog in the hunt and a heart fully invested in a team, even one that so frequently crushes your soul.
For one night, anyway, it was all there for you. Try explaining all of that to your friends who aren’t sports fans. Good luck with that.
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