NFL Dos and Don'ts: The New York Jets

As we prepare for another year of NFL football, let's take a look back at the highs and lows from 2014 for each team. Welcome to NFL Dos and Don'ts. If you missed one, you can read all our recaps right here.

The New York Jets finished the season 4-12, got their coach fired, got their general manager fired, and generally made their fans welcome the grim embrace of death. So, it was the same season the Jets have had every four-to-five years.

Do

The best play for the 2014 New York Jets involves two players no longer on the roster: Mike Vick and T.J. Graham. Vick and Graham hooked up for a 67-yard touchdown against the Steelers in Week 10 and actually handed Pittsburgh one of its five loses on the year. It's not much, but it's the Jets.

The Worst

The worst play of the season is a tough nut to crack. Unlike the 2014 receiving corps, there are a lot of options. Like, a lot. There was the time the team forgot how to spell "rivalry" in a hype video for an October game against the Patriots, which serves as its own comeback that a bully (like the Patriots) might come up with. "'Rivalry'? You couldn't even spell 'rivalry' if you tried." And it is indisputably true. The Jets are not so much rivals of the Patriots as they are a group of people occupying the same space as the Patriots for three hours bi-annually.

There was also that time when the Kansas City Chiefs scored a touchdown even though the Jets made a great play to deflect the pass and the only receiver in the area was seated on his ass. Unfortunately, that deflected pass went directly into the hands of that receiver seated on his ass and he simply lunged into the end zone for a Totally Jets™ play.

The Worst moment of the 2014 New York Jets season is also the quintessential play of the 2014 New York Jets season. December 7th. Jets-Vikings. Geno Smith, coming of a 7-13 passing day night against the Dolphins in a brutal, brutal Monday Night Football game, looks for redemption and…throws an interception for a touchdown on the first damn play from scrimmage.

One of appealing things about football is there are so few games that, unless something really goes wrong in a given year, each game is somewhere between kind of important and VERY IMPORTANT. That provides hope, it provides a reason to get a little bit excited to watch a team like the New York Jets for three hours. And even when the season is lost, there's still the hope that this specific game—"any given Sunday," etc.—will be good, or at least entertaining. Very rarely does a game begin and within eleven seconds you know that you will regret everything in a few hours.

The Vikings beat the Jets two minutes into overtime on an 87-yard bubble screen pass. New York had gotten the ball first, but had to punt. Typical Jets.