Getty A group of New York Jets fans letting their voice be heard during an NFL game.
New York Jets fans can be called a lot of things and often are.
One term that is commonly associated with fans of the green and white is passion. That was once again on full display this week after an analyst decided to take a shot at the team.
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I’m Sorry What?
On Monday, March 28 Adam Schefter of ESPN announced that the Jets have re-signed restricted free agent Eddy Pineiro to a one-year deal with a maximum value of $2.75 million.
Jets are re-signing restricted free-agent kicker Eddy Pineiro to a one-year deal worth up to $2.75 million, per his agents @DrewJRosenhaus and @JasonRosenhaus.
What appeared to be a routine signing of a kicker was anything but. Shortly after Schefter hit the send button on that tweet, fellow ESPN colleague Mike Clay decided to take a shot at the Jets saying, “so the Jets did this and signed Greg Zuerlein“:
This immediately ignited Jets’ Twitter and they let Clay have it with a barrage of tweets:
NYJ_Matt decided to use a very relevant pop culture reference with a nice Gang Green twist telling Clay to politely, “leave my kickers name out of your f****** mouth!”
The Jets have been terrible for a long time. They are currently leading the longest active NFL playoff drought, but believe it or not everything they do isn’t a joke. As Gang Green content creator Matt O’Leary points out with some pretty thick sarcasm, the Jets just became the first team in NFL history with a kicking competition.
Competition breeds success or in Clay’s opinion, controversy and confusion.
Good Ole Fashioned Kicking Competition
It was an odd tweet by Clay in general, but when you look even deeper at the Jets’ kicking issues it is even more bizarre.
They need someone to rise from the ashes to seize the moment and be the answer at kicker they have been desperately searching for.
With this most recent roster transaction, there will now be a three-way kicker competition heading into the main portions of the offseason.
They have the aforementioned Pineiro and Zuerlein, who they added over the weekend. In addition to those two, they have Matt Ammendola as a leftover from last season.
Were you impressed w/ #Jets kicker Matt Ammendola stepping in at punter during a critical time of need? Time to get more impressed, this was his first time EVER PUNTING IN HIS 24 YEARS ON PLANET EARTH; @nyjets reporter @EGreenbergJets! The legend continues: #NYJvsCAR #TakeFlight
Each one of these players has warts, none of them are perfect.
Zuerlein is the most proven of them all, but he has been in a recent slump over the last few years. Ammendola has the versatility of punting and kicking, but the consistency has been nonexistent.
While finally, Pineiro was perfect, going 8-for-8 last year, you couldn’t have asked for more. However, his limited sample size and weird trajectory on his makes raised some eyebrows. Obviously, the Jets felt similarly and added more serious competition to the room.
In today’s NFL, the Jets are low-hanging fruit. They haven’t been to the Super Bowl in over 50 years, they haven’t been to the playoffs since the 2010 season, and they have been a laughing stock.
It is up to this current regime of Robert Saleh and Joe Douglas to change that narrative, but in this particular case, it is simply one analyst trying to make a joke that swung and missed badly.
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