New York Jets

On Saturday, the New York Jets used the sixth overall pick in the 2008 NFL draft to select Ohio State defensive end Vernon Gholston.

By most accounts, Gholston is a talented if somewhat inconsistent prospect who projects as a fine player in the NFL. Nevertheless, this weekend’s draft may ultimately be remembered less for the picks the Jets made than for the one they didn’t: Arkansas running back Darren McFadden. Despite the public-relations spin, the fact remains that the Jets desperately needed McFadden. Chad Pennington needed him. Kellen Clemens needed him. Eric Mangini, too. But above all, their bedraggled, tempest-tossed fans needed him. They needed him both to jump-start a moribund offense and to redefine a staid, faceless and increasingly boring organization. As is their wont, the Jets missed the opportunity, ignoring the overwhelming fan sentiment for McFadden. They knew better.  read more »

By handing out nearly $140M in free-agent contracts this offseason, the New York Jets have sent a bold message to the rest of the league: they’re one of the worst-run teams in football.

Unsurprisingly, their moves have met with general approval in New York, where even the most ill-advised spending sprees are typically embraced with open arms by people who believe that buying is trying. Amazingly, the nearly endless array of high-priced free-agent flops over the last 15 years has done little to dent this illogic. Now, as then, the quick-fix allure of free agency remains strong.  read more »

One warm winter night in 2006, fullback Darian Barnes, formerly of the New York Jets, had a dream about superhuman football players tackling monsters. A longtime comic-book enthusiast, he decided it had the makings of something real.

“It just kind of like hit me that as many years as people tried to fuse sports and athletes with multimedia and pop culture media, it’s never really worked because the two things are so different,” Mr. Barnes, 27, told the Transom by phone on Jan. 15.  read more »

On Sunday afternoon, the Jets will close out their most disappointing season in recent memory when they face a hapless Kansas City Chief team at the Meadowlands. And unless you’re motivated by lingering resentment stemming from the sudden departure of Herman Edwards in 2005, chances are that you’re going to have a difficult time finding reason to watch the last scene of a rather tired act. The bad news, of course, is that the Jets’ season has been lost for two months. But here’s the good news: like virtually every other NFL team, the Jets aren’t far removed from having a playoff-caliber club in 2008. Here’s how they can do it.  read more »

If there was anything remarkable about yesterday’s 10-6 loss to a profoundly mediocre Tennessee Titans team, it was the eerie similarity with which the usual events unfolded. Once again, the Jets found themselves in an eminently winnable game against a favored club. And once again, they self-destructed, throwing crippling interceptions, showing no credible running attack, allowing six quarterback sacks, missing field goals and extra points, and otherwise securing defeat where most clubs would have managed victory.  read more »

Giants O Needs a Barber

CHARLES CURTIS

How ironic that on a night that Tiki Barber used halftime to revisit his stinging comments regarding Eli Manning’s leadership last August, the Giants lost 22-10 in a game in which they needed him the most.  read more »

If the Jets had an eye on the second-greatest upset in franchise history yesterday afternoon, the stars were aligned. The weather was terrible; the field in Gillette Stadium was drenched; their spirits were high. And after the Patriots’ first drive ended in a rare punt, that faint glimmer of hope grew brighter.  read more »

As the Jets wind down the latest installment in a long line of disappointing seasons, one thing is certain: never before has the organization’s chronic incompetence come so clearly in focus as it figures to be on Sunday afternoon, when it will be juxtaposed with the arrant perfection of the best NFL team in a decade.  read more »

Anything is possible, says that old adage about “any given Sunday.”

But this isn’t Sunday, it’s Thursday, Thanksgiving, a holiday the 9-1 Dallas Cowboys have celebrated over the years with a 24-14-1 record.

While the odds aren’t exactly in the Jets’ favor, it should be some small comfort that there was nothing but skepticism about their chances against the Steelers last week—until they pulled off their 19-16 overtime upset. The Jets need to repeat that performance, and then some, against Dallas.  read more »

Despite the team’s 1-8 record, there may yet be some good to come out of this season for the Jets.  read more »

The bad news: It’s mid-season and the Jets are in a nosedive, fighting to stay out of last place in the AFC East.  read more »

Mike Tannenbaum, the Jets’ 36-year-old whiz of general manager, had spent most of the game scr  read more »

Jason Horowitz writes about the efforts of Washington Democrats to assert themselves on Iraq without handing the Republicans a political gift. As Charlie Rangel put it:

"The President will say we're in business with Osama bin Laden. Anytime, politically, you have to explain what you are saying, you have a problem. And so if I am there saying, 'Cut the funds for Iraq and the war in Iraq,' then someone is going to say, 'You are taking away rifles.'"

Joe Conason thinks the Democrats ought to cut funding for the war anyway.

Steve Kornacki explains the political perils of the McCain Doctrine.

And John Koblin writes, from amid the steaming wreckage in Foxborough, about the feel-good season of the New York Jets.

-- Josh Benson

Defenders of the Atlantic Yards community benefits agreement have long whispered that it is vastly superior to the much ballyhooed minority hiring plan hatched last February by the New York Jets for the football team’s ill-fated West Side stadium. The Real Estate just got a copy of the plan, which was widely believed to have been kept secret from the press when it was released. (Jets spokeswoman Marissa Shorenstein said this week it was given to anyone reporter who asked for it.) But it isn’t so much a plan as it is a plan for a plan. In it, the consultants promise to “[establish] parameters for firm participation” and “implement an outreach strategy to target areas of high unemployment.” Jets President Jay Cross was widely quoted at the time as saying the stadium would give “up to $100 million” worth of work to minority-led firms (about 5 percent of the total project cost), but the plan doesn’t even mention that figure as a goal, let alone guarantee it. By contrast, developer Forest City Ratner promises in the Atlantic Yards agreement at least to try to hire 35 percent minority construction workers and to steer 20 percent of the construction spending to minority-owned firms for the 22-acre project in Brooklyn, which will include a new basketball arena for the Nets and 16 apartment and office towers.

Yet one element that the Jets included that Forest City did not was a conflict-of-interest clause: the politicians, association heads and consultants who were on the minority advisory board for the stadium and were to continue on as supervisors of the agreement “will be precluded from entering into any service contract work with the NY Jets and its consultants on the [New York Sports and Convention Center] project.”

Earle Walker, executive director of the Regional Alliance for Small Contractors, which devised the Jets agreement, told the Real Estate that the conflict-of-interest clause came about largely for a practical reason. “We would have a meeting that would go on for two or three hours and we would spend at least an hour on who was going to get what contract,” he told the Real Estate.

Just imagine what went on in that Forest City board room!  read more »

Without such a conflict-of-interest clause, three of the eight signatories of the Atlantic Yards agreement have already received money from Ratner. BUILD, which had received $138,000 as of mid-October, is drafting its jobs program right now. The big question is whether BUILD will actually do the training itself (and take much of the money), or subcontract it out to other certified, and experienced, job-training programs (and simply take an administrative fee).

-Matthew Schuerman

Rob Corddry Didn’t Jump  read more »

Their hopes for a new stadium on the West Side foiled by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, the New Yo  read more »

Their hopes for a new stadium on the West Side foiled by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, the New Yo  read more »

Meg Chrisner thought it all looked just perfect, even though the party had been put together on the  read more »

Up at Harvard for his 25th reunion Friday night, Daniel Doctoroff, deputy mayor for economic develop  read more »

If Plan A for the city's Olympics bid was the West Side stadium, whither Plan B?Whiffs of a continge  read more »

So recently, boosters for the proposal to build a stadium for the New York Jets and to host the 2012  read more »

Competition is supposed to make everything cheaper, but lately it's been making the West Side a whol  read more »

"It's a dog-and-pony show without the dog or the pony," one reporter muttered as Charlie Schueler, a  read more »

George Pataki has been noncommittal about whether he'll seek a fourth term as Governor of New York,  read more »

"If I see Anthony Weiner, I'm gonna kick him in the balls!"Woody Johnson was kidding around at the a  read more »

Brian Ellner looked at home as he made his way through the crowd of fashion designers, style editors  read more »

In March 1956, as the baseball Dodgers and Giants planned their abandonment of the city that had giv  read more »

What's the point of having a front group if you can't stay behind the curtain?That's the question th  read more »

In the Jets' first-ever television ad for the team's planned stadium, to be built atop the West Side  read more »

Naked Airport: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Revolutionary Structure, by Alastair Gordon.  read more »

On the morning of Sept.  read more »

With his New York City convention judged a big success and providing him with a formidable bounce in  read more »

Conventions are to political junkies what spring training is to baseball fans-a time when hope sprin  read more »

On Wednesday, June 16, New York Jets owner Robert Wood Johnson IV is scheduled to give a speech at t  read more »

There was little surprise when New York was selected on May 18 as one of five finalist cities in the  read more »

If the New York Jets, a lunch-bucket football team if ever there was one, return to the city of thei  read more »

Wednesday 31st Take out your boob (the one you married) and lug him to Battery Park to watch Janet  read more »

Speaking to a packed ballroom of droopy-eyed business leaders in the New York Hilton on Mar.  read more »

On the latest act of the mayor's West Side development drama, the New York Jets are pursuing talks w  read more »

The Observer has previously endorsed plans by the city and the state to assist the New York Jets in  read more »

On Feb.  read more »

It's no secret that the Republicans are coming to town.  read more »

The conservative movement, which at various points has felt slighted, ignored, abused, dismissed and  read more »

East Side Block Isn't KeenOn Getting the Shaft  read more »

Namath without the nightlife; smooth-faced Jet QB; precise, rhythmic command; poised and articulate,  read more »

Downtown bomb-thrower, Gen-X John Reed, better read than Red: Pissed-off prodigal son returns to tar  read more »

Painting the Town Green:Farmers Market Comes to U.W.S.In a decisive move, Community Board 7 solidifi  read more »

The Jets are preparing to launch an all-out political and public-relations blitz designed to build s  read more »

The Victorian artworks found on Forbes@Christies.com are certainly beautiful to behold, but there's  read more »

One mo' time for the Tuna?According to pro football sources, former New York Jets and New York Giant  read more »