Suddenly — at least for now — there was this moment of unintended, unexpected, unbelievable joy.
This is the kind of game, the kind of night, if you are a sports fan — a real one, a legit one, with skin in the game and a dog in the hunt and a heart fully invested in a team — that explains all of it, the whole bag. This is why you care. This is why it matters. This is why you come back. Again. And again. And again.
This is why: Jets 22, Bills 16.
All of it. Every second. Every emotion. Every ridiculous swing and sway of emotions, every swatting of your nervous system. You can’t help it. If you care — if you truly care — this is the why. This is the high and the low. This is the agony and the ecstasy. This is wanting to ball up in a corner and cry at 8:30, and wanting to scream till you’re hoarse by 11:15.
“You are always trying to win,” Robert Saleh would say at the end of the most absurd, ridiculous, heartbreaking and fascinating day in the Jets’ 63-years of absurd, ridiculous, heartbreaking and fascinating days. “Always. Always.”
There was an actual rainbow that stretched above the MetLife Stadium sky as the minutes ticked off to kickoff, and if you believe in such ethereal things, you had to be happy. And then there was Vinny Testaverde trotting onto the field as an honorary captain before the coin flip … and be honest: when you see old No. 16, the first thing you probably think about is him grabbing for his Achilles tendon on the awful afternoon of Sept. 12, 1999.
One especially cynical long-time observer of the Jets texted this earlier in the day: “Here’s the key over/under tonight: 22 minutes, 48 seconds.
