New York Jets

• 1. Introduction

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  The New York Jets have won exactly one Super Bowl in their entire history, and they won it the hard way. In January 1969, facing an NFL team widely expected to demolish them, the Jets defeated the Baltimore Colts 16-7 in Super Bowl III. It was the first time an AFL club had beaten an NFL opponent in a world championship game. What makes that victory so haunting is what came next: the Jets have never returned to the Super Bowl. More than five decades have passed. They have outlasted rivals, cycled through coaches, moved stadiums, rebranded their colors, and drafted quarterbacks who became legends elsewhere. And they are still waiting. This is the story of how a franchise named after a jet plane became, in some ways, the most grounded team in American professional sports.

• 2. Born From a Boast

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  On the 14th of August 1959, the founding meeting of the American Football League took place, and Harry Wismer walked in representing New York. He proclaimed that the city was ready for another professional football team and that he was more than capable of running it himself. Wismer was granted a charter franchise and named it the Titans of New York. His reasoning was blunt: "Titans are bigger and stronger than Giants."

  Wismer was not just a blowhard with a slogan. He had been a three-sport letterman in high school, played football at the University of Florida and Michigan State before a knee injury ended his playing career, and went on to become a broadcasting pioneer. He also formulated a league-wide policy that allowed AFL teams to share broadcasting rights equally, a forward-thinking arrangement that helped smaller-market teams survive.

  But in New York, his team struggled. The Titans played at the decrepit Polo Grounds, a stadium the baseball Giants had vacated in 1957. In their first two seasons under head coach Sammy Baugh, they went 7-7 both years. By 1962 the debt had mounted so severely that the AFL itself had to absorb the franchise's operating costs until the season ended.

  In February 1963, a five-man syndicate purchased the Titans for $1 million. The new owners were Sonny Werblin, Leon Hess, Philip H. Iselin, Townsend B. Martin, and Donald C. Lillis. Werblin renamed the team the New York Jets, partly because they would play near LaGuardia Airport and partly because the name rhymed with the Mets, with whom the Jets would share a new stadium in Queens.

• 3. The Namath Gamble

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  Sonny Werblin had graduated from Rutgers University and spent his career at the Music Corporation of America, eventually rising to president of its television division. He understood stardom in a way most sports executives did not. His first major act as owner, after rebranding the team, was to sign a quarterback from Alabama named Joe Namath to what was described at the time as an unprecedented contract.

  Namath was not just a talented passer. He was, as former teammate John Dockery later recalled, "a guy that came along and broke a lot of the conventions." His boisterous personality and lifestyle put the Jets on the national sports map in ways winning games alone could not.

  Werblin's partners eventually grew impatient with his style of unilateral decision-making. Though the franchise had begun to turn a profit, Werblin was making all policies himself with little input from the others. His partners forced a dissolution of the partnership, and Werblin agreed to be bought out in 1968, the very year the Jets won the AFL Championship over the Oakland Raiders 27-23 at Shea Stadium.

  Werblin did not get to see the Super Bowl win he had set in motion. But his gamble on Namath paid off precisely as he had imagined: the quarterback led the Jets over the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in Miami, and head coach Weeb Ewbank, who had already won NFL championships with the Colts in 1958 and 1959, earned his place in football history a second time with a different team.

• 4. Stadiums and Wandering

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  The Polo Grounds, where the Titans first played, had not hosted a major tenant since 1957. The Jets hold the distinction of being the final team to play a game there, a 19-10 loss to the Buffalo Bills on the 14th of December 1963.

  Moves defined the franchise's early decades. The team shifted to Shea Stadium in Queens in 1964, sharing the ballpark with the New York Mets. That arrangement came with recurring frustrations: the Jets were typically required to open each season with road games while the Mets finished their schedule, a problem made worse in 1969 and 1973 when the Mets had deep playoff runs.

  By 1977 the Jets were pushing to escape. They announced they would play two home games per year at the Giants' new stadium in New Jersey. The city of New York responded with a lawsuit. The settlement allowed the Jets to play two September home games at Shea beginning in 1978 for the remaining six years of their lease.

  Owner Leon Hess then attempted to renew the Shea lease on better terms, asking mayor Ed Koch to expand the stadium's capacity and to address the fact that the Jets received no revenue from parking. Koch resisted. On the 10th of December 1983, the Jets played their final game at Shea, a 34-7 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. As fans stripped the stadium for souvenirs, the scoreboard displayed "N.J. Jets" in reference to where the team was headed.

  At Giants Stadium in New Jersey, the Jets were tenants in every visible sense. The Giants refused to rename the venue, so the grounds crew hung green banners and placed Jets logos over the Giants' insignia during Jets games. The blue and red seating bowl could not be changed at all. Years later, after a failed attempt to build a stadium on Manhattan's West Side collapsed when Sheldon Silver and Joseph L. Bruno withheld their support, the Jets entered a 50-50 joint venture with the Giants to build what became MetLife Stadium, which opened in April 2010.

• 5. Ownership and Character

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  Leon Hess became the team's majority stockholder in 1973. He bought Philip H. Iselin's share after Iselin died in 1976, purchased Townsend Martin's 25% stake for $5 million in 1981, and acquired Helen Dillon's share three years later for another $5 million, reaching sole control of the franchise.

  Hess had built his wealth through the Hess Corporation gas stations, but his feeling about the Jets was personal. He generally stayed out of football decisions, letting coaches and general managers run the team. But after a 6-10 season in 1995 under Pete Carroll, Hess broke from habit. At the press conference introducing Rich Kotite as the new head coach, he said, "I'm 80 years old, I want results now."

  Kotite produced a 4-28 record over two seasons. Hess then personally pursued Bill Parcells, then a disgruntled coach at New England, and persuaded him to take the Jets job in 1997. Parcells led them to a 12-4 record in 1998 and back to the AFC Championship Game. Hess died on the 7th of May 1999, with the Jets still short of another Super Bowl appearance.

  After Hess's death, Woody Johnson purchased the franchise for $635 million. His grandfather, Robert Wood Johnson II, was a member of the family that founded Johnson and Johnson. Johnson was unknown among NFL owners at the time. He tended to stay out of football operations much as Hess had, though his presence increased when Rex Ryan was hired as head coach. In 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Johnson as United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom. Johnson's brother Christopher took over day-to-day ownership duties until Woody's ambassadorial term ended in 2021.

• 6. The Long Drought

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  Bill Belichick resigned as Jets head coach the day after being formally introduced to the job, leaving a note written on a napkin at the podium that read "I resign as HC of the NYJ." He went on to win six Super Bowl championships with the New England Patriots, a fact that has since become a defining element of the Jets-Patriots rivalry.

  The rivalry itself had already run deep. In 1966 the Jets knocked the Patriots out of playoff contention with a 38-28 win at Shea Stadium. In 1997 Parcells left New England to coach New York. The Jets then signed Curtis Martin from the Patriots as a Pro Bowl running back. On the 23rd of September 2001, Jets linebacker Mo Lewis tackled Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe, leaving him with internal bleeding and opening the door for Tom Brady to take over as starter.

  Since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970, the Jets have won the AFC East division only twice, in 1998 and 2002. They have qualified for the playoffs 12 times in total and reached the AFC Championship Game four times, most recently losing to the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2010. They have not returned to the playoffs since, holding the longest active drought in the NFL and the longest in what is called the Big 4 of North American professional sports leagues.

  Their championship drought has also become a city-wide record. In 2023, the Jets surpassed the New York Rangers' 54-year gap between titles, from 1940 to 1994, to hold the longest championship drought among New York's major professional sports franchises.

  The 2023 season brought a high-profile addition in quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who suffered a season-ending Achilles tear on the first offensive series of the regular season. Rodgers was released in February 2025, though he remained on the roster until the 12th of March. Detroit Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn was then hired as the franchise's new head coach, beginning a fresh attempt to close the longest gap in Jets history.

• 7. Identity in Green and White

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  When the Titans became the Jets in 1963, navy and gold gave way to kelly green and white. The new helmets carried a jet airplane silhouette in green with the word "JETS" in thick white italics along the fuselage. That image, refreshed and adjusted across decades, remained the visual core of the franchise for many years.

  The Jets hold a specific place in NFL uniform history: they were the first team to wear a throwback uniform, doing so in 1993 for a home game against the Cincinnati Bengals to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1968 championship team.

  The 1978 redesign introduced green helmets, a new wordmark with a jet-plane silhouette extending from the top of the "J," and a cleaner overall look that lasted through 1989. That design became the template the franchise returned to in 2024 as its primary uniform, with the "Gotham Green" shade from the 2019 redesign renamed "Legacy Green" and carried into the new set.

  The 2019 departure from the classic look introduced a medium shade of green the team called "Gotham Green," black as a recurring trim color, green helmets with a metallic finish, and a new numeral font. A black alternate with a matte-black helmet featuring a metallic-green facemask was added in 2022 when the NFL allowed teams to use a second helmet shell.

  In 2025 the Jets joined seven other teams in a Nike program introducing "Rivalries" uniforms for a single home game against a divisional opponent. The base color is a slightly green-tinted black with silver numerals in a custom "Gothic" typeface, and a shoulder and pants stripe pattern alongside a grey manhole-cover design meant to evoke New York City.

• 8. Players Who Defined an Era

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  Joe Namath's number 12 was retired on the 14th of October 1985, the same year he entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame. His selection in the 1965 draft remains the most consequential first-round pick in franchise history. Don Maynard, who caught passes for the Jets from 1960 through 1972, and Curtis Martin, who rushed for yards in a Jets uniform from 1998 through 2006, are among the other Hall of Famers most closely associated with the franchise.

  The team has also had its share of notable failures in the draft. Running back Blair Thomas, taken second overall in 1990 after averaging 5.4 yards per carry at Penn State, rushed for only 2,009 yards and five touchdowns across his entire Jets tenure. Linebacker Vernon Gholston, selected in the first round in 2008, did not record a single sack in three seasons.

  The 2022 draft class offered a different kind of history. Cornerback Sauce Gardner, selected fourth overall from the University of Cincinnati, made the All-Pro Team as a rookie, the first cornerback to achieve that since Ronnie Lott in 1981. Wide receiver Garrett Wilson from Ohio State went 10th overall in the same draft.

  The franchise established its Ring of Honor on the 20th of July 2010. Among the inductees are Larry Grantham, who played linebacker from 1960 to 1972; Wesley Walker, a wide receiver from 1977 to 1989; and Nick Mangold, a center whose tenure ran from 2006 to 2016. Weeb Ewbank, who coached the Jets from 1963 to 1973, is also in the Ring, a reminder that the single greatest moment in franchise history remains tethered to one coaching tenure and one quarterback whose number has not been worn since the fall of 1985.