I'm disagreeing with the take that the Jets are suddenly a team you don't walk out on because they're on the rise
That's totally different and a more cautious sentiment than "there's much evidence that
this team is a mess."
The Jets are a historical mess, right? Aside from the Super Bowl in '69, a run in the eighties, a run in the nineties and aughts, and back to back AFC Championship appearances in the last decade, this hasn't been a team that's had a real run of success. Or do those last sentences lead to a different conclusion?
I think they point one in the direction that the Jets as a historical mess is as much a media creation/narrative as it is reality. Are the Johnsons dipshits? Probably. Have they gotten it wrong lots of times? Probably. They also got it right back in '10-'11 when they were indeed better than the Pats and going to those aforementioned AFC Championship Games. There are franchises with less success than that, for sure. One thinks of the Browns, for example. Or the Chargers, really. Why don't players just up and leave those franchises?
And to your point -- this team
is a bit different, and there's no evidence of it being a mess. And it's not just 4-2 and some ***-kickings doing the talking. It's the competent GM. It's a competent coach. It's the owners backing off a bit. It's even establishments like PFF and The Athletic recognizing the job that's been done and the position they're in. Bill Barnwell of Football Outsiders/ESPN fame just penned an article asking if the Jets were the third-best team in the AFC. Clickbait? You decide.
I'll just say that if Moore is asking out because of history, that's his problem. I get it, really. Guys want to get paid and are doing everything they can to look out for their future interests. But why even have a CBA bargained-for pay scale, then? Why have a draft?
I'm not about power to the player in this instance. The Jets haven't done wrong by Moore. He's in a situation that's not beneficial to him, and he wants out. So, too, is the situation not beneficial to 3/4ths of the league's players. Really, it's not beneficial because of federal law that dictates that already-hired members of the union can bargain with the league. That's a structural/legal problem, not a problem with the league and its functioning. Moore is more than upsetting the apple cart; he's sort of upsetting the entire CBA. I can't go for that. No can do.
Tough ****, Elijah. You're on a team with a winning streak going. Sit down, now, and watch them attempt to win more.