Links: Despite win, CBS New York continues to pile on the Jets

The Jets subverted expectations by displaying mild competence in their preseason win over the Titans. On the heels of that bombshell, it's interesting to see how some of the folk who were bashing the Jets are reacting to this display. Two writers from CBS New York got the ball rolling today.

Jason Keidel - last seen blathering about the Jets being a joke with no redeeming qualities reacted to the win by saying that "tanking rarely works" and the team "needs to give their fans something".

His big suggestion is that they should "make a gesture" to prove they care about the 2017 season...by signing Colin Kaepernick.

Obviously whether or not Kaepernick will sign for a team is a hot-button issue right now, but regardless of what you think about him on or off the field, spending money on signing him is about as illogical a move as the team could make right now, unless they believed potentially upgrading their quarterback play was the only thing holding them back from being a postseason contender.

It's been established that the Jets brought in Josh McCown to mentor and hopefully pass the torch to Christian Hackenberg. It makes no sense to abandon that plan just to win a few more games, worsening the team's spending power and draft capital - the key to the next phase of their rebuild process - in the process.

Meanwhile, Keidel's colleague Steve Lichtenstein has decided to preach about how preseason games don't matter.

Of course, he's right. Preseason games don't matter. But they can tell you if your team is on the right tracks, as I'm sure many writers fell over himself to point out when Jets teams with higher expectations looked like garbage in previous preseason campaigns.

Moreover, Jets fans know very well that preseason doesn't matter, so you don't need to talk down to them as if they are naively buying Dexter McDougle jerseys and pre-booking their Super Bowl flights based on Saturday's win.

Ironically, Lichtenstein's most recent article was an optimistic take on the possibility that the Jets might not be as bad as expected.

The result might not matter, but the Jets were expected to look like a complete and utter shambles and actually took it to a possible playoff contender and gave a good account of themselves.

Of course, the team could still fall apart this preseason, or even excel all preseason and then collapse once the games start to count. However, maybe this team just isn't as bad as you thought it was. Maybe you should start to entertain that possibility.