New York Jets and NFL Teams Sure to Crack Under Pressure

The word "pressure" is an operative term, used by the media to somehow entail a general feeling of outside influence on a sports team. The phrase is thrown around quite a bit, especially in the NFL. 

Most of the time, pressure is self-caused. 

Take the New York Jets for example. 

This is already a franchise entrenched in the biggest American city, facing the biggest blitz of sports media the world has to offer. Yet the team has the loudest coach in the game running things, and after trading for Tim Tebow, also the game's most polarizing player. And he's a backup, mind you. 

Few will doubt that there is "pressure" on the Jets leading into the 2012 season. 

In the following slides, we break down a couple of teams—including the Jets—that are facing an immense amount of pressure in 2012. Will they crack?

New York Jets

A circus is really the only way to describe training camp with the New York Jets in 2012. 

There's a ring leader in head coach Rex Ryan, a main attraction in backup quarterback Tim Tebow, the sideshow clown in Antonio Cromartie and the guy everyone feels bad for in Mark Sanchez. Add in a number of fights over the last two days and the non-stop media coverage throughout camp, and what else would you call this? 

One thing is sure: This certainly is not status quo for the rest of the 31 NFL franchises. 

But what does it all mean? The Jets better put up or shut up in 2012. 

There are reasons to think they won't, however.

The dynamic at quarterback could tear this team apart at the seams. It's just hard to envision a team using specialized sets for the backup as one that could even get to the postseason, much like make a run once there. 

This whole situation just looks like a ton of TNT that lit its own fuse the second New York traded for Tebow. Sooner or later, that TNT is going to blow, and it's going to take a lot of people within that organization with it.

We can consider Ryan a locker room maestro if it doesn't. 

New Orleans Saints

The entirety of the Bountygate scandal not only rocked the Saints' franchise, but it also put a tremendous amount of pressure on the club in 2012. 

Gone is head coach Sean Payton, an offensive mastermind who helped transform Drew Brees from a too-short, weak-armed quarterback that no one wanted into a record-setting, $100 million franchise player. 

Gone is Jonathan Vilma, the heart of the Saints defense for the last four years. 

Gone is that good feeling you got about the Saints, that underlying, subconscious frame of mind that rooting for the city of New Orleans was the right thing to do. 

Now, the pressure is on the remaining members of the Saints organization to keep this very talented football team afloat. Remember, the Saints have won 37 games over the last three regular seasons. It's far from a pushover.

This team will either join together in the face of this scandal, or crumble under the pressure of it all. 

Detroit Lions

Lions head coach Jim Schwartz and GM Martin Mayhew have been integral parts of one of the most impressive rebuilding efforts in NFL history. 

A 0-16 team in 2008, the Lions went 10-6 in 2011 and qualified for the playoffs for the first time since 1999. The team improved in every season under Schwartz and Mayhew, going 2-14 in '09 and 6-10 in 2010 before last season's breakout. 

Now, however, the Lions need to show they belong for good. And the offseason they just completed really couldn't have went any worse. 

The Lions had six arrests between the end of the 2011 season and the start of training camp. In return, Detroit is likely to lose two important pieces—Nick Fairley and Mikel Leshoure—to suspensions to start 2012, and starting cornerback Aaron Berry was flat out cut. 

And this all came after the Lions' imploded on the field with stupid penalties in several games in 2011. 

Like the Saints, Detroit is still a very talented football team. It's capable of overcoming what has happened both on and off the field. But you also wonder when these things are going to start creeping up on a club. 

Overall, there's a tremendous amount of pressure on the Lions' shoulders to start 2012. A step back certainly isn't out of the realm of possibility.