Hell hath no fury like a Jets fan scorned.
John Idzik learned that earlier this week after a bizarre press conference that opened with a buzzword-filled, 19-minute monologue. Now Eric Decker and his wife Jessie James Decker have learned the hard way not to poke the angry bears.
The country music star received so much backlash from fans Thursday when coming to her husband’s defense over Jet fans’ reactions to a seemingly harmless tweet Wednesday about a prize giveaway, that she deactivated her account from the social media site.
She won’t be gone for long, though. Decker said Friday that his wife will reactivate her account and defended her tweet in which she said, “You think he really cares what y’all think haters? He’s laughing his ass alllll the way home….Life is pretty good here. Can’t complain.”
“First of all, I think whoever writes stuff — she wasn’t attacking Jets fans,” Decker said after practice. “She was attacking people that were saying negative comments. I’ve got a lot of respect for the fact that she’s gonna say what a lot of people feel. If you don’t like something, don’t say anything. That’s my attitude to those people. But at the end of the day, she’s got my back and I did a nice gesture as far as reaching out to fans to give a prize away. I guess if you guys don’t like that, then don’t write about it.”
The bitterness all began when the wide receiver tried to engage fans by giving away an autograph. “#jetsnation, tell me why you love the @nyjets using #jetsdiehardfan and I’ll send a signed prize to my favorite,” Decker tweeted Wednesday.
Innocent enough, except it didn’t dawn on Decker that not many Jets fans love their 1-7 team right now. So he received a bunch of sarcastic responses and was taken to task by displeased Gang Green supporters.
Not taking kindly to the hateful comments, Mrs. Decker struck back at the criticism, only for her to hop off Twitter after receiving her own hateful tweets, one of which told her to “go back to the kitchen.” As of Friday afternoon she had still not reactivated her account.
The Jets’ $36.25 million free agent signing seemed amused by the reaction to it all.
“It’s just funny what people say. There’s articles written about it, there’s people backlashing. It’s just kind of comical to me,” said Decker, whose deal with the Jets is
for five years.
What’s definitely been comical is the Jets’ performance this season, and on Thursday two brothers formed a website called firejohnidzik.com to express their desire to see the general manager canned. Their goal is to raise $10,000 for a billboard near MetLife Stadium, and as of early Friday evening, they had raised $5,955.
Willie Colon said the team is as upset as the fans are, but regarding the website he said, “No thoughts at all. No comments.”
Rex Ryan recognizes the fans are displeased and demand a better performance from their team.
“I understand being 1-7, there’s nobody happy about that,” Ryan said. “Our fan base for sure, I can understand it. But I think some of that comes with the territory. You’re here, you’ve got passionate fans and they want a lot better from their team than obviously the record indicates. They’re gonna get our best shot and I think they have so far. It just hasn’t been good enough. We’ve just got to keep working and find ways to win. I think that will subside some of the other stuff.”
Winning solves most problems, but the Jets haven’t given their fans any reason to believe they have a chance to win at Arrowhead Stadium, regarded as one of the toughest
road environments in the NFL. Another loss could drive the fans even madder, but there have been no signs of a fractured locker room.
“We’re staying together as a family,” Colon said. “We’ve made this mess and we’re gonna go down with this ship.”
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