The Jets stand alone.
With the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres ending a 14-year playoff drought by clinching a postseason berth on Saturday, the NFL’s Jets have the current longest non-playoff streak in North American pro sports at 15 seasons.
Credit to Rich Cimini of ESPN for flagging the fact that the Sabres’ success has underscored the Jets’ chronic failure. And Cimini notes that Jets coach Aaron Glenn, a member of the 1998 Jets team that came within a game of the Super Bowl, desperately wants to turn things around after a failed first season,
“I want to leave a legacy, I do,” Glenn said this week. “When I’m gone, man, I’m looking at this team being a team that consistently puts themselves in a place to win. . . . Every day. There’s not a day, there’s not an hour, there’s not a minute I don’t think about that.”
The coaching staff has undergone dramatic overhaul from the staff Glenn hired when he got the job. And if not for a massive buyout, Glenn may have been swept out the door with them.
Instead, Glenn gets another shot. The league is littered with worst-to-first stories, which serve only to fuel league-wide hope during the months of 0-0.
Will this be the year the Jets finally get back to the postseason? The door is open, the draft is looming, and anything is possible.
If it doesn’t happen this year, the Jets will move one step closer to the all-time record drought of 25 seasons without a postseason game. That one is held by the Cardinals, who went from 1949 through 1974 without making it out of the regular season.