Any which way you slice it, they stink
The New York Jets are easily the worst team in the National Football League. They’ve been crap for a while, but so far this year, they are one-upping (or one-downing?) themselves. Yet, according to ESPN, people are still placing bets on the Jets to win the Super Bowl.
As ESPN’s David Purdum puts it, the bets “seem more like tricks than treats,” but there are still instances of people risking money on the lowest of bottom dwellers to emerge as the champion of the league. Must be nice to have that kind of money to rip up and flush down the toilet.
The Jets are 0-6. They have ten games left to try to get into the playoffs with every single team in the AFC in front of them. Even if they win the rest of their games with a terrible roster and maybe the worst head coach in the league, a 10-6 record is not guaranteed to make the playoffs.
They have a -110 point differential, which means that they have been outscored by an average of more than 18 points per game. If you lose by 18 points, that means you got blown out. The Jets do that, on average, every game. They have the worst offense in the leak and it’s not remotely close. The Jets have scored just 75 points, the only team still in double digits (and some teams have only played five games).
It’s not even like you can make money taking the Jets with the spread. They have failed to cover by more than 11 points per game.
Funny money
But somehow, some people think it is either a good idea or hilariously funny to just hand money to a sportsbook. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem like anyone is forfeiting entire paychecks or anything like that. ESPN reports that last week, the Westgate Superbook in Las Vegas took a $40 bet on the Jets to win the Super Bowl at 5,000-1. Perhaps the bettor found a couple twenties on the street – literally “found” money – and decided it was worth the risk.
The MGM took a $5 bet and a $2 bet at 1,000-1 odds. That’s still too much money. The New York Jets have quite literally zero chance to win the Super Bowl. And that’s not me being loose with the term “literally.” I literally mean literally.
Before the season, bettors were a little more courageous. Westgate took a $500 bet on them to take home the Vince Lombardi Trophy at 200-1 and the MGM took three $100 bets on the Jets to win it all. Now, those were before the season when the Jets were still supposed to be dreck, but at least nobody had seen visual and statistical evidence as to the extremes of their awfulness yet.
Perhaps a better wager would be on the Jets to go winless. William Hill had the odds of that at +1,500 after Week 4. The “yes” side is now down to +350. Almost all of the money has been put on the team to go 0-16.
The Jets opened as 10.5-point underdogs to the division-leading Buffalo Bills for this coming weekend’s game. That line has already moved to +12.5. It doesn’t get any easier, as the Jets have an absolutely brutal schedule the rest of the way, playing only one team that currently has a losing record.