Chelsea fans should take one look at Woody Johnson’s Jets and be very afraid

On 12 January 2000, exactly 31 years after the New York Jets won their first Super Bowl, the front page of the New York Times carried the news that the team had been bought for $635m by Robert Wood Johnson IV, whose great-grandfather had founded Johnson & Johnson.

Woody Johnson was not well known then, and in a release provided by the team, he issued the kind of bland statement you’d expect from a first-time sports-team owner: “We want to emphasize that we are totally dedicated to bringing a winning and a championship team to this area.”

Well, that was 22 years ago, and the Jets have yet to play in a second Super Bowl – let alone win one. In fact, they have not made the playoffs in 11 years, the longest current drought in the NFL.

So Chelsea fans should be wary after ESPN, citing “sources close to the situation”, reported on Monday that Johnson is readying a bid to buy the club from Roman Abramovich. Under Johnson, the Jets have set the standard for mediocrity, or even worse.

Johnson’s boldest statement as an owner came in January 2009, when he hired the bombastic Rex Ryan to be his coach. That April, the Jets traded up in the draft to select the Southern California quarterback Mark Sanchez. It was a glorious time for the Jets, who played in back-to-back AFC championship games. They lost both, but the madcap Ryan, the unspectacular but efficient Sanchez and a rambunctious defense formed a nucleus that looked as if it would last a while.

That second AFC title game, a 24-19 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers in July 2011, is the Jets’ last playoff appearance, though. Ryan bombed out and was fired in 2014. Sanchez’s career tumbled after his infamous “butt-fumble” in 2012, when he collided with the rump of a Jets lineman and