JetsFix Mailbag 2026: Part Three

It's time for the final part 2026 JetsFix Mailbag, which has been running over a few parts over the past month. Remember, the idea is for everyone to ask one Jets/NFL question and one non-NFL question, a rule which many of you - as always - failed to adhere to. Here's part three:

By-Tor

Jets Q:

What are the strengths and weaknesses on both sides of the ball? What kind of player would have the most impact in improving each side. Or you can frame that with what player should we replace and get the most improvement. Both sides.

It's a much more balanced line-up now on both sides of the ball. Whether deliberately or by default, the decision to move or part way with players like Quinnen Williams, Sauce Gardner and Aaron Rodgers, and to a lesser extent Davante Adams and Jermaine Johnson, has ensured there are fewer highly paid players at certain positions which can turn a potential strength into a potential weakness overnight if there's an injury or a downturn in form.

Ultimately, this means the strengths and weaknesses are less glaring than in the past, which is probably a healthier and more sustainable way to set up your roster.

Their biggest weakness is probably a lack of depth at some positions (linebacker, for example), which could be exposed in an injury crisis. However, that position could be a strength if Demario Davis remains healthy. Whereas there is a number of options at cornerback but none of them have proven themselves to be capable of playing at an elite level for a sustained period yet.

If I had to pick a guy on offense and a guy on defense to upgrade from, it would probably have to be Geno Smith and whoever the other safety is alongside Minkah Fitzpatrick. But as to whether either would be feasible to find, I think you're probably going to have to wait until after the season to address those spots.

Non-Jets Q:

Started a full band. First rehearsal tonight to see what we've got. Assuming all goes well and we agree on general vision and the intent to gig. I need a bunch of original band names.

I'm great at song and album titles but where it comes to band names, perfection is the enemy of good. Maybe it will be helpful to share my history:

Before my previous band became Bent Double, we thought we had the perfect name as we were going to call ourselves Fat Mary but then right before we got going, a woman called Mary started working in my department and although she wasn't actually fat, she perhaps wasn't thin enough that we couldn't be certain she wouldn't hear it and fail to realize the name wasn't designed to poke fun at her, either. (Yes that was a quintuple negative. How's that for a band name? Uh, perhaps not).

Other names we flirted with and quickly rejected included Flintfish, Titwank and Remnants of the Jasper Era.

But this is going back 25 years and you wanted original band names. It would therefore have to be inspired by the kinds of things people say today. Since I limit my interaction with real human beings as much as possible these days my only frame of reference is the JF comments section, so the kinds of names you'd end up with by listening to that would be stuff like "The Girth of Verlander's Hog", "Shaqwife" or "Percentage Blackness".

Not sure how helpful any of that is.

Juunit

Jets question:

How is Geno Smith round deux gonna go?

I still can scarcely believe we ended up here, although it was a marriage of convenience of sorts, in the way all of the potential Jets quarterbacks and all of the potential Geno Smith teams quickly evaporated as soon as the offseason got underway.

Back in 2015, when Smith was still on the Jets but not playing because he was the number two with Ryan Fitzpatrick entrenched as the starter, he gave off an air of being distant from his teammates and coaches when I got to see him up close. At that time he looked thoroughly miserable, to the point of getting snippy with reporters, one of whom he flat out told "I hate you guys" and when the reporter laughed, he dead-panned "I'm not joking" all stone-faced.

It's actually just as hard to believe he was still on the Jets in the following season and even started a game for them.

Anyway, I was originally optimistic that his success in Seattle will have improved his confidence in himself and his ability to relate to his teammates, and clearly he is more mature now. That being the case, he would be able to perform at a high level and not let the media get to him.

The absolute full-court press the NY Post put on him due to these recent traffic tickets and domestic dispute incidents was worrying, but how he has reportedly played at training camp has so far been reassuring. I could see things unravelling fast if they face early adversity, though.

Non-Jets question:

How true do you think it is that the kids can no longer read and how much of it is media hyperbole? Assuming it is true and we're hot on the path to Idiocracy, how much worse will new technology like AI exacerbate the issue that is potentially already caused by existing technology (iPad kids)?

Kids no longer want to read books and school is becoming a speedrun exercise where students just look for the most efficient shortcut to getting their grades without actually learning anything.

Maybe these skills will prove useful in a society that seems to be increasingly geared towards efficiency optimization, but I fear for a world where, when I'm an old man, it won't be possible to have an intelligent conversation with anyone under 40.

That's depressing. I wish I just used AI to answer this one now.

__fense

Jets/NFL question:

We all complain about Woody Johnson, and he certainly does a bunch of dumb things, but with Dolan's Knicks winning it all this year, I've been thinking about how much ownership really contributes to success for a franchise. I've always felt that there aren't really any good owners, and the successful ones have essentially just gotten lucky, and then are seen as being smart or 'good' simply because of their success, instead of them actually being successful because of their smarts or 'good'-itude. But I can't deny that owners have an impact on their teams, and some must have more of a negative impact than others. What's your opinion of where the Jets stand with Woody at the helm? Is he something a team should be able to overcome? Is there a simple change ("Stop yelling at players and threatening to have them cut in the locker room after games") that would fix most of the issue? Do we just have to wait until Brick takes over and hope he does a better job? To put it all into one question: Are we screwed forever?

Yes.

And for my non-NFL question/hypothetical scenario:

You're walking down the street one day when suddenly a light green 1976 Ford Pinto with Idaho US plates jumps the curb onto the sidewalk in front of you and stops, blocking your path. A man gets out in cream-colored breeches, a loose wool shirt, a powdered wig, and a bright blue wizard hat festooned with white stars and crescent moons. He walks up to you and explains that he really needs your help.

He explains that as you can tell from his hat, he is a wizard, but he's actually not magical at all, but is instead a time-travelling alien that has access to advanced technology that is often confused with magic. He is on a mission from his government to protect the human race because far in the future, human experimentation with alien life on a faraway world jumpstarted the evolutionary process that resulted him his species' existence. As evidence, he shows you holographic displays, his ability to change pigeons to doves on command, and, strangely, an ipod nano. He apologizes, and admits he's never quite sure which things are suitably impressive in which era. He also shows you his true form, which looks something like a mix between a mongoose and a axolotl with long fingers that have two extra joints that go the opposite way as on a person and an opposable pinky. He quickly changes back to looking like a person, and tells you his hands are only like that because of the human interference in his species' evolution. You didn't mention the hands, but he's almost pre-offended, expecting you to be unsettled by them. He clearly has done this before with other people, and has been hurt by their reactions.

You're not completely convinced by this, but you can't explain how he was able to change his form so fast. You suddenly realize he's been talking this entire time and you haven't been paying attention. He seems to be in the middle of a surreal and oddly-fleshed-out backstory about how he's been traveling through time trying to guide humanity to the point to where they can mess with some microbes on his planet. As he starts to go off on a tangent lamenting how he never gets to go to the cool eras that happened after his species evolved, you try to cut him off by reminding him that he wanted your help with something.

He tells you he can't do much to change the timeline himself, because the 'chief wizard' (his words) told him that his inhuman nature would not be able to react appropriately to human events. Instead, he's supposed to focus on putting humans in the right place at the right time and have them change history through their own decision making. He doesn't see the point, but rules are rules, and he wants to go back to his time period and planet one day, so he does his best. To do that, he can travel forward or backwards in time, but due to the limitations of his technology, he can only make jumps in increments of 50 years, and he can only take people with him by swapping their consciousness with someone in the target era. Non-living matter can be sent fine, but the mind-swap thing is the only way a living mind can survive the trip.

Apparently he needs to fix a mistake he made where he sent a person back in time from 2468 to 2018 and accidentally caused Brexit to happen, which will indirectly cause Laos to lose the battle of Adelaide, and eventually stunt the grown of the pan-African Space Administration. Anyway, he's spent the last five years training a guy 250 years ago to be the perfect agent to get everything back on track, but he needs someone in the present day to swap with in order to make the plan happen. He wants you to be that person and help save an entire species of intelligent life from blinking out of existence.

Your job would just be go back to 1776 and live out the rest of your days there. He'll give you an couple hours to gather up anything you want to take with you, but nothing living. If you try to take something alive, it's body will make the trip, but it will be dead when you get there. He doesn't care what you do in the 17th century, your job is just to be the body to get his real agent into the present day. You can change events as you wish as much as you are able, because the chances are very low that you'll do anything that makes the future space mission not happen. Someone's only done that a couple of times and it just happened with the Brexit thing, so he's not that worried that it'll happen again one right after the other.

If you agree to go, he says you've got a few hours to get your affairs in order. The other person will be taking over your life, so you should probably tell people what's going on. He'll bring with you everything you have on your person when you make the trip, so collect anything you want to take with you. A backpack is fine, but you need to be carrying when he does the transfer. Electronic devices will still work as normal in the past, but only the parts that actually traveled with you. So, for instance, you can take your phone and see stuff stored locally on it, but there's no reception or internet in 1776, and there's no way to recharge it unless you figure it out yourself. As payment, he'll take whatever money you have on you, add an extra 14%, and then convert the total into pure gold, at today's market rate. He'll ship that back to the past to you in a separate box, so you don't need to carry the gold yourself to get it into the past. You can also help yourself to whatever your counterpart has in the past that he doesn't take with him, although the alien admits he doesn't remember exactly what that will be. "Probably a farm or something. Humans always seem to have farms." he says with a shrug. Things you leave behind will go to your counterpart in turn, although the alien claims he's not expecting much at all, and you're welcome to make any arraignments you want giving your stuff away.

The alien lets you know that it's your decision, but you'd be helping to save his life and the lives of an untold number of beings. He chose you out of all the people currently on Earth especially for this task. When you press him further on why it has to be you, he gets a little flustered and admits that it's mostly that you happen to look a lot like the guy he needs to bring to the present, and because bodies don't get transferred, it's less jarring for a person to be put into a body that's similar to their own. If you say no, he'll have to go ask someone else that looks less like you, and the further down the list he goes, the harder the transfer will be. But he needs an answer now, as he's on a time crunch for his plan to work.

He pauses to wait for you to respond, but then suddenly blurts out "Wait, I almost forgot!" He says with a sly grin, like he's pulling out a trump card he's sure will work, "The guy you're switching with looks just like you, except for one thing. You'll live the rest of your days in a body that looks just like yours, expect your dick will be bigger in 1776! I've never seen a human say no to that!"

How do you respond? Do you agree to a one-way trip to the past? Pretending that you said yes, even though you probably won't, what would you bring with you? What would you do once you got there? Would you try to change history in any way, and if you did, do you think you'd be able to be successful at changing it for the better?

Well, you see, my mind was made up and I was willing to go and help him for the greater good...until he made that dick comment.

For, just like Marty McFly, whose main weakness was that he lost his temper whenever anyone called him chicken, I too have an irrational weakness that manifests itself in the inability to turn down an opportunity to make a self-deprecating dick joke.

I'd therefore turn down the offer by saying "Why would I want to try to improve on perfection?" but delivered in such a way as it was obvious I was being sarcastic.

Unfortunately, the alien wizard, due to his lack of human empathy would not understand the nuance behind this gag. In the end, it's a moot point anyway because it soon becomes clear he was masking his intentions and I never really had any choice in the matter.

I'm bundled into the Ford Pinto which, presumably using the same technology as the alien used earlier, transforms its shape and color to resemble a DeLorean from Back to the Future.

Before I have a chance to react, the car reverses back, then screeches down the street before reaching the necessary speed to jump back in time - and vanishes.

Why did it transform into a DeLorean? That becomes clear when the gathering crowds are all discussing what they just saw and comparing their camera phone footage. The alien wizard announces to the crowd it's just a viral stunt using Hollywood special effects, designed to promote the upcoming movie Back to the Future IV and that they should all share the clips online. Of course, there's no such movie, but it gives the alien wizard enough cover to slip away undetected before any more questions are asked. And when they are asked, nobody has any answers anyway so it just ends up being one of life's mysteries.

But where (or when) am I? I arrive, in the DeLorean, in 1776, in the middle of a deserted field. It turns out the whole "mind swap" story was a ruse and that he is literally sending me there mind, body and soul. It didn't make sense anyway that you could take a bag of physical stuff but only your consciousness would travel through time. Whoever wrote the alien wizard's cover story for him clearly didn't think it through.

I spend a few hours getting my bearings and contemplating if I can actually use the DeLorean, ultimately opting to stash it in a nearby forest in case I can figure out how to use it to get back. But when I leave the area to go look for food and am halfway to a nearby township, it promptly explodes, destroying the entire forest and leaving me temporarily deafened despite being miles away from the epicenter.

This perhaps reveals the true intent of the alien wizard's attempts. Clearly they had spent some time mastering time travel but the device was so volatile it was destined to explode in a few hours anyway, which is why he had to send it away. However, fashioning the device into a DeLorean that could transform into a Ford Pinto for discretion reasons had led to a sensitivity in the device which meant it could only reach the optimum combination of speed and mass if there was a person roughly my size on board.

So, the alien wizard just needed someone my size to get the device away from earth so that the resulting explosion did not create an international incident and increase his chances of being discovered and captured by the military. All that other stuff was just to make it sound convincing enough that I'd hopefully be willing to come quietly.

So, what do I do when I'm back in 1776? The first time, you mean? Because, you see, going back in time in this way gave me a rare opportunity to create an infinite loop. I could live out the rest of my life, educating myself, accumulating wealth and ensuring that 2026 me gets information that he's going to benefit from the next time he's bumped back 250 years.

By developing trust in my descendants, and creating an intriguing enough pipeline via a combination of treasure maps and Russian Babushka dolls, I was able to pass on information from each era about what assets to invest in, compile scientific research and give future me a heads-up about what information would be useful to bring back with him and start over. Each descendant would then find another descendant they could trust to keep passing this on until someone who would be alive in 2026 would have the information on them.

So, the second time, I take the alien wizard at his word, go and grab the bag with all this stuff in it and get into the pinto voluntarily. It still sends me back 250 years but this time I'm ready.

With essentially infinite resources and infinite time, I can keep going back and accumulating more and more knowledge with the ultimate goal of one day figuring out how I can return to live out the rest of my life in 2026. I don't even need to do most of the research myself, if I and my descendants can create a compelling enough mystery that some of the world's greatest minds are prepared to keep adding to the detail we have that will eventually get back in my hands right before I meet the alien wizard in 2026 each time. Even a young Stephen Hawking gets involved at one point.

There's just one of me and I only live one life, but each time I get that bag and the information contained therein, I become better equipped to work towards the ultimate goal and my new existence overwrites the old one.

However, after 40 loops (basically 10,000 years), we come to a collective realization that even with infinite time, knowledge and resources, we are never going to catch up with technology built by an alien race far into the future. So instead the next bag has a post-it note that just says "don't go back".

Now I know what you're thinking: Why didn't you just do that after the first time? Let's just put this one down to an oversight.

When I don't show back up with the bag a few hours later as agree, the alien wizard guy has to find another guy my size at short notice to bundle into the DeLorean/Pinto before it explodes and unfortunately the one he finds just happens to be Khabib Nurmagomedov who promptly beats the ever-living piss out of him.

So, great, everything is solved. Except, now the Pintolorean is going to explode leaving a two-mile crater in a domesticated area, killing thousands and inadvertently starting World War 4 when Elon Musk recklessly tweets out who he thinks was responsible without any evidence.

But wait, World War FOUR, you say? Uh, yeah, we accidentally started another one in loop 36. My bad. As you're reading this is actually only loop 35 - that's why you don't know about that yet.

Anyway, at least this means I am safe. Or does it? Having survived only because of information that was only relayed to me via a previous incarnation of myself, this creates a paradox which would surely cause time to collapse in on itself.

So, basically, we're all screwed whether I say yes or no.

Well that was a waste of time.

Thanks to everyone for their great questions this year.