It hasn’t yet set in, of course. There’s still so much to talk about! Is Drew Brees’ legacy secured? Has Peyton’s been tarnished? In a Super Bowl where so much talk focused on New Orleans and Haiti, could Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey have been reanimated Voodoo zombies? These are matters that demand discussion. And discuss we will, until we are as numb to the world as a Colts fan in diabetic shock. This week belongs to cheering, whining, over-analyzing and conclusion jumping. It is also a good time for bandwagoners to start reading the Saints’ Wikipedia page.

The pain won’t start to settle until this Sunday, when the realization that all we have left is golf and college basketball will begin to take hold. There will be talk of these things called “pitchers and catchers,” and of how they will be “reporting” soon. Reporting? To what? Sure, for us Jets fans, we’ve already had two weeks to make our peace with the offseason, but it’s different now. It’s suddenly real. We can talk ourselves green in the face for the next half-year about how we think next season’s going to go down, but we can’t prove a nick of it. We’re shouting into the void. Unless you think the Combine and the start of free agency constitute entertaining television, we stand today at the precipice of pure, unfiltered nothing.

I think it’s a perfect time to launch a football blog.

The logo of the Jets Kvetch, a New York Jets blog

Welcome to the Jets Kvetch, soon to be your favorite website. From today onwards, I’ll be charting Gang Green’s journey to the Promised Land, the very same path the Saints just walked. Hopefully we won’t have to wait three years between losing the conference championship and winning it all. I’m not a journalist, however, and if it’s straight team news you’re looking for, I would recommend any one of the excellent sites linked to in the sidebar, particularly The Jets Blog. Instead, I’ll examine things from a fan’s perspective, with all the ecstasy, heartbreak and gnashing of teeth that entails.

This actually isn’t my first go at this. About a year ago I started up outstandinglosers.com, a website aimed at documenting my work on a novel about the 1999 AFC Championship game (it would seem life imitated art this year). While I love the fact that my old site went live just days before we drafted Sanchez, it was way too confused to work. More and more, I abandoned my plans for the novel, OL became a straight fan site much like this one will be. The darn thing was all over the place and my work ethic sagged quite severely during the middle of the season. Plus, I had no readers, and commenting was turned off. It just wasn’t ideal, you see?

I still have no readership, but I’m going to begin promoting my new venture as soon as possible, and with some luck I may have a stronger readership base before long. I’ll also be reposting the old Outstanding Losers posts, at least the relevant ones, over the next couple of months, so check the archives.

2010 ought to be a great, great year for the Jets, and I’m prouder of my team now than I’ve been in a long, long time. I think it’s going to be a fun ride. Check back in tomorrow for my dissection of the previous season and my outline of what I believe our collective expectations should be for this new decade. In the mean time, congratulations Saints fans, I only wish it could have been us getting our asses beat down in that game.

Mark Sanchez, Kerry Rhodes and Jerricho Cotchery of the New York Jets

J-E-T-S! JETS! JETS! JETS!

- Manhole Out.

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