NFL Open Thread: The Great White Hype Edition
By 
Linsanity, the second time as farce:
The glorious, unforgettable White Dynasty began on Halloween in a Jets upset of the Bengals that no one actually watched. Oh, Jets and Bengals fans watched it, of course, and the rest of the football world saw the highlights and skimmed the stat sheet. White threw for 405 yards and three touchdowns! He also threw a pair of first-quarter interceptions, but we all know that nothing a quarterback does in the first quarter of a dramatic upset matters. White’s two interceptions in garbage time against the Patriots in Week 7 also didn’t count, because two interceptions at the end of a blowout is the traditional start to any Hall of Fame quarterback’s journey.
The Age of White continued through the entire first quarter of the Jets’ 45-20 Thursday night loss to the Colts in Week 9. White was knocked out of the game with a forearm injury, but the first quarter of TNF is when legends are made! (Read: the first quarter of TNF is when the entire NFL media is still awake and sober enough to thirst-post exaggerated opinions for engagement, so it’s an ideal spawning ground for silly storylines.).
A golden age dawned after those magnificent (semi-competent, really) 75 minutes of football. The New York Post declared MetLife Stadium “White’s House” on Sunday’s back cover. Ian Rapoport Tweeted a diplomatically worded report suggesting that White could supplant Zach Wilson as the Jets starter, at least in the short term. It sure sounded like Robert Saleh was looking for an excuse to give Wilson the full Tua treatment. How could that possibly set the Jets franchise back another three years?
Alas, the White Epoch ended suddenly on Sunday, just 15 days after it began. White threw four interceptions in a 45-17 meltdown against the Bills. He has now thrown eight interceptions in 122 attempts. The Wilson Era is expected to restart as soon as Wilson is healthy.
The moral of the story is this: EVERYONE loves a Jets quarterback controversy. Jets fans love them because they are so traumatized that they cling to any semblance of hope. Non-Jets fans love them because they’re reliably entertaining trainwrecks. The tabloids love them because they sell papers. The Jets themselves seem to relish them because the organization has run on bad ideas for about 50 years. But just because everyone wishes a zany controversy into existence doesn’t mean that sane, rational people (like Walkthrough readers!) should get sucked into it.
Farewell, Mike White. We’ll see you next year, when you are competing with Ian Book for the Saints’ starting job.
They promised me Joe Namath, they gave me Nathan Peterman.