Your Latest Dumb Jets Scandal: A Trip To Dave & Buster's

The Jets lost to the Buffalo Bills on Sunday, and they lost badly. This was not a surprising turn of events, as the Jets are a not-very-good football team that often loses badly to other football teams that are good and sometimes also not very good. But these are the Jets, so obviously their latest loss can pass without a stupid, drummed-up controversy.

The New York Post's Mark Cannizzaro decided to do a bit of shit stirring after the game when he wrote about Rex Ryan's decision to take his team to Dave & Buster's Saturday night instead of staying in the hotel to conduct meetings. As Cannizzaro has it, this was an act of hubris that may have motivated the Bills toward victory:

But there is no arguing the perception Ryan created, unwittingly delivering a motivational bullet to a struggling Bills team that had lost its previous three games by a combined 41 points.

Ryan's intentions were surely pure, meant as no disrespect to anyone. If Ryan is about anything as a head coach he is about team building and camaraderie.

But he had to know what the perception would be: The Jets were so confident they replaced team meeting time with a night out of Skee-Ball and Pac-Man.

Sillier still is the fact that a few Bills players did their part to throw fuel on the fire, and talked as if the trip to Dave & Buster's really was a slight against their team:

"Me personally, I feel it was disrespectful. I take my nephew to Dave & Busters,'' Bills defensive end Mario Williams told The Post.

"What were they thinking?'' another member of Bills told The Post. "I can understand if the team was tight and needed a break to loosen up, but they were coming off a bye week.''

I guess when you play for a franchise with a history as bleak as Buffalo's, you have to go digging for motivational material in the stupidest of places. Cannizzaro then turned on poor Willie Colon, who had to defend his team for daring to enjoy a few hours of shitty arcade games and low-grade chicken wings and act as a set-up man for Cannizzaro's killer kicker:

"It was team-bonding moment for us to grow together as a team,'' Colon said. "It had nothing to do with our actions on the field.''

That's also debatable.

This is a dumb thing that absolutely nobody should care about.

[ NY Post]