No New York Jets fan expected this. Not even the most pessimistic fan envisioned 10-straight years of non-playoff football. Not even the disgruntled and totally incorrigible Jet fan could have expected the impending misery while watching Rex Ryan’s defense fail against Ben Roethlisberger and the Pittsburgh Steelers on third-down with the AFC championship game on the line.
As bad as it’s been at times, this couldn’t have been expected. After all, Bill Parcells’s arrival in 1997 coincided with seven playoff appearances over the next 14 years—the name number of playoff appearances over the organization’s first 37 years of existence.