Introducing Just Jets: The Podcast!

I'm gonna record it just for shits and giggles. Where's this guy gonna be playing football next year? Will it be in? They're gonna milk it as long as possible. On a beach as a retired man, or will it potentially be the New York Jets? Dude, why am I so fucking nervous? Since Friday, I made it clear that my intention was to play, and my intention was to play for the New York Jets. Okay. No idea. Let's go! Let's go! I can't believe he just actually spat it out. Holy shit! Welcome, everyone, to the very first episode of the just Jets Podcast, powered by RCG Digital Media. My name is Ras Guevara. I'm here with my co-host, Rich McLeod. And each week, we're going to attempt to bring you some, you know, analysis from two demoralized, long-time Jets fans. It's going to be paired with my wonderful co-host's newsletter. And we're going to without, you know, why don't you just jump right into it, Rich. Introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about why people should care, why you think about the Jets. What's up, guys? My name is Rich McLeod, writer and, I guess, creator of just Jets, The Newsletter, now expanding into a podcast. Yeah, I've been watching the Jets. Say with your chest, you are the creator. You created this, and now it's, you know, now we're taking it to the second step. To the second step. And hopefully, a much better second season than the first one. No strange or two seasons like that, although I'll say that one was particularly heartbreaking. I've been watching the Jets, yeah, ever since I was a kid. Kind of got into sports a little bit later. My first full jet season was the Brett Favre when I was 17, 18 years old. Although the first jet game I ever actually fully watched was the Doug Bryan game. So it all kind of started in misery, which seems appropriate. And it's sad to say that the two best seasons I ever watched were the second and third seasons I ever watched. And I was in college. It's all that way from there. And now I'm 33 turning 34, still waiting to return to the playoffs. Oh, man. And I guess we'll tell a little bit about where Rich and I, along with our fabulous executive producer, Mark Levine, we all used to work together at mlb.com. We'll cut that out. But for now, we used to work very, very long, crappy shifts surrounded by baseball 24-7, which we all love. But we all kind of bonded over our mutual love, quote unquote, and misery with the New York Jets. And then last year, we started a group chat. I think it was Mark and I, we had no idea. We did not plan a podcast or anything, but Mark and I actually were together on March 15, 2023. That's right. When Aaron Rodgers announced on the Pat McCaffrey Show that he was wanted to join the New York Jets. And you joined us that same day, we just popped in. I did. And we were just like, we weren't creating content, we were just experiencing it together when he made the decision. And we were giggling like school children. And we were like, he chose us. He gave us the rose. Like, it's us, you know, like, and it was it was an exciting time. And it definitely marked the a new era in Jets football. And with that, why don't we just jump right into it? You wrote a wonderful newsletter today about this new, I guess, sequel to a new era that we've entered into. Tell me a little bit about when you what kind of like prompted that that train of thought and why did you feel it was appropriate to write about that? Yeah, you know, I, the last newsletter I wrote at the end of last season, and I just haven't had the bandwidth to really like make this like a full year long newsletter, so it's really been more like seasonal type thing. So when they played their last game against the Patriots last year and ended Bill Belichick's reign of terror by kicking his ass out of the door, that was the last newsletter I wrote until today. And I kind of went back to that, just wanted to revisit my thoughts at the end of last season after like such a tumultuous time. And in that, I kind of ended it on like talking about hope and how next year is going to be different, but also very similar, but how I approach it is going to be like more guarded. And, you know, how many months later now, six, seven, eight months after that, kind of feel exactly the same way where, you know, this time last year, the vibes were essentially unmatched. I don't think we've felt that way at any point since the 2010, 2011 playoffs after they beat the Patriots. You know, 2015, obviously, we thought they were going to make the playoffs, that overtime win was big. I don't think we thought they were competing for a Super Bowl that year, even if they made it in the Ryan Fitzpatrick year. And, you know, last year felt like this, like unbridled hope that didn't have a ceiling on it. And you had all those months after the trade of like the hype, you had the whole off-season and training camp, and the draft and hard knocks and everything. And you're just like, this is it, like these teams that end these droughts and curses and flip the script, it's always in these like epic ways. And we've seen it so many times with the Red Sox. Even like, look at the Chiefs, the Chiefs are the new dynasty, but they had gone 50 years without winning the Super Bowl either. Yeah, I know, 100%. They won the year after the Jets did in 69. And then they didn't win it again until a few years ago. It definitely had a magical feel to it. And we all got caught up in the hoopla. We all, and it just was so romantic the way it began. It just, and then it lasted for fucking play. Like it just, it was, it was incredibly, we knew it. Like once I saw him on the ground, I knew it was over. Putting the Super Bowl out of the question, eliminating that from the equation, what would you consider a successful season for a 41-year-old quarterback coming off an Achilles injury? Yeah, I think, I think it's winning the division. And then in the playoffs, it's kind of like we'll see what happens when you get there. Like they could lose the first game of the playoffs. I think that would be disappointing. But like there are, there's universes out there where they make a legitimate run and who knows where it ends. Things have to go right, like they do for most teams. But yeah, I think it starts with ending that playoff drought. And this division is winnable. The Bills, the Jets have played them well over the last several years with horrible, horrible quarterback play. And they've beaten them each of the last couple of seasons. Last year, Buffalo had their problems. They don't have Stefan Diggs now. They lost some guys. They really don't have receivers at all. It's really like Josh Allen, Titans and James Cook. So I think Buffalo is not going to be bad by any means, but I think that's a team that you can compete with and probably surpass because they have more talent than them. And then Miami, obviously a lot of Flash, they're going to get off to another hot start if you look at their schedule, and everybody's going to crown them when they're seven and two. But that team can't play in the cold weather. And until proven otherwise, they crumble in the big moments. I mean, look how they coughed up the number one seed last year and then just kind of like faded away in the playoffs. So I think both of those teams can be caught. I think the Jets have a lot of talent. And I think, yeah, winning that division, ending that playoff drought is the main goal. And then, you know, see what happens when you make it into the playoffs. Anything can happen at that point. It's a crapshoot, right? That's what I'm saying. Like, Super Bowl expectations out of the window. Like, you just want to give yourself a chance. You want to be a good team. You want to be a team that has a chance to win every week, right? And these are all like crappy coach. Maybe it's the old coach in me, but like it's crappy coach cliches that actually like mean shit, like mean stuff. Like, if you give yourself a chance, if you have an opportunity to win every time you step foot on the field, that to me would be a successful season. And just like the way you titled your newsletter this morning, like the privilege and the burden of hope, right? It was that. We had a privilege to believe in a team, and that our team could be successful. But the burden of that is that, okay, you said your expectations too high, you're about to be conflicted. Open yourself up. Yeah. You fall in love, right? When we talked about this before we started recording, like it's like a relationship, like to truly give yourself to somebody, to truly like fall in love with somebody, you open yourself up to being heartbroken, and that's what fandom is, that's what this team is, that's what being a fan of a crappy sports team is. It's like you give yourself in knowing that they're going to end up breaking your heart short of winning a Super Bowl. Yeah. That's where we are. Again. Again. I think that's really well said, though. Being a sports fan is constantly leaving yourself vulnerable, and the highs are you cannot replicate them. I still remember from a baseball perspective, when the Mets won the pennant in 2015, when we were working together, I was walking around the city the next day, which was my birthday. I had my cespidus neon sleeve on, and I was listening to New York, New York whistling through the streets of Washington Heights. On top of the world, it was the greatest feeling ever. When the Knicks have made their runs last year, it's like the city is like literally buzzing. But then it's like the lows are so low. And last year is pretty much as low as it gets without losing a championship in a devastating way. And yeah, here we are again, and it's like dipping our toe in, and being hopeful. There is a logical side of my brain. And then there's the emotional side. The logical side that is detached from everything is like, I think they could win 12 games. I think they could do that. The emotional side of my brain, two plays into the first quarter on Monday night, it's going to be like, we're going fucking two in 15. That's it. It's over. They do not play nice with each other. Constant war. Constant war within our bodies to try to make it through the season. Well, with that, why don't we bring in our executive producer, Mark Levine, and tell us a little bit about what your expectations are for a 41-year-old quarterback who's coming off an Achilles injury, and what would make it a successful season for you, in your eyes, for the Jets, eliminating the Super Bowl out of the equation, because we're not going to talk about that, because again, the playoffs are a crap shoot and anything can happen. But what would be a successful season in your eyes? I will not be the voice of logic on this show, because I will be the voice of eternal optimism, and I will absolutely bring up the Super Bowl, because there is a world where the Jets could win 13 games, get a home playoff game, maybe two. Make it to the Super Bowl. Their schedule is not difficult. It's not. There are maybe three games on there that you could see them having maybe no chance at winning. If that, every other game, obviously most of the time you split the season series with your division rivals. I think they could sweep the Patriots. They better sweep the Patriots. If they don't, there's something went wrong. I don't see a world where they, obviously there is a world where injuries take over as they seem to so often happen with this team. They could go nine and eight and not make the playoffs. The way you hesitated before saying that. because it hurts. It hurts so much to say. But nine times out of ten, I will be the voice of optimism on this podcast. And I will say that the Jets absolutely have a chance. It's safe to say you are not emotionally guarded this season. I was also the person who saw Aaron Rodgers go down four plays into last season and was like, oh, it doesn't look so bad. He'll eat it out in a couple of weeks. And I was certain that he was going to come back before we got the unfortunate news that he was out for the remainder of the season. Did you also believe the Aaron Rodgers returns at the end of December pipe dream that they tried to sell us? I wanted to so bad, but the one thing that I did not have eternal optimism about was Zach Wilson. So I did not see a path for... I was in the complete other side. I did not want him to come back because I knew that if he came back, regardless of how he fared in the postseason, that it would impact this season. And I was like, no, please, God, no, please, no. Let's just be out of contention. I do not want my old ass quarterback, the fact despite the fact that we're the same age, my old ass quarterback kind of being impacted for two seasons rather than just the one. And I was afraid, I was like, oh my God, what if he breaks a leg or breaks a shoulder? And I'm like, because he can't move. And our offensive line is terrible. Yeah, towards the end of the season, the offensive line was so depleted that there was no chance of- Yeah, it was even worse than the beginning of the season. There was no way he was staying upright and making it through. Luckily for you, Ras, the tank commander made sure that these games would not matter. Zach Wilson was so bad that Tim motherfucking Boyle, a UConn alumni, and I could say this as a UConn fan, had to start two games. Oh my God, it was a disaster. Last year was just a disaster, and we still checked in, week in and week out. And I think that's the perfect encapsulation of what it means to be a Jets fan, right? You're like, I wore a Jets starter jacket when the Jets were one in 15 on the Rich co-type. Like that's who I was, right? I was a fan through fucking thick and thin, man. And like if I survive that year, I can survive almost anything. And just to recap, like Rich definitely thinks winning the division and being competitive in the playoffs would be a successful season with a 41-year-old quarterback coming off an Achilles injury. I am a little bit more optimist, less optimistic. I just want us to be competitive. My bar is so low, dude. Like I just want us to be competitive. I just want every week when I sit down on the couch and turn on the television to not automatically assume that we're going to lose and just to be competitive in games. That's all I want. Then Mark on the other end of the spectrum is like, hell no, we're winning the Super Bowl, baby. We're taking it all the way here. Aaron Rodgers will lead us to glory. I will say, Rods, I do think that your competitive hope still needs to include the postseason in some way. Yeah. because if they don't make the playoffs, like something went hardly wrong. Everybody's getting fired. Sala's getting fired. Aaron probably, Douglas is gone. Yeah, no, 100 percent. And maybe we're in play for Dak Prescott next year. But anyway, that's a completely different conversation. I don't want to talk about that. That was a great conversation that Ras and I had last night. What's the possibility of Dak Prescott if the season somehow goes incredibly wrong. But let's hope, let's hope it does not get to that. And I am very, very excited about this because it's going to be fun. It's going to be fun. Misery loves company. And I don't like to scream into the wall by myself when I am like three beers in and the Jets are losing like four touchdowns. And who knows what happens. But with that, we're going to wrap it up. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for a wonderful demo episode. I look forward to this group therapy session that we got going on. And we'll see you guys next time.