Predicting this Jets season is anything but a toss up for diehard fan Alex Noon.
The 24-year-old Long Islander has become an overnight sensation in the football world after flipping a coin last August to determine all the wins and losses Gang Green would go through in the 2022-23 year.
Entering into week 12, Noon’s picks remain improbably undefeated at 10-0 and he has the Jets reaching the AFC championship game with an 11-6 regular season record.
“I wanted to do something that could bring some good juju to the Jets,” Noon, a lawyer-to-be who just passed the bar exam, told The Post with the fateful quarter in hand.
“I flipped the coin,” he said, recalling a Las Vegas Raiders fan who had similar success last season. “I figured, ‘Hey, [what’s the] worst case scenario here?'”
So the Greenlawn, LI, native recorded his honest tosses — heads for a win and tails for a loss — onto a sheet of loose-leaf paper and uploaded them to his Twitter account at the start of the NFL’s pre-season. Week by week, the silver magic took its course.
The Jets opening 24-9 loss to the Baltimore Ravens weighed little on the mind of Noon, who simply chalked up his first right call to “the same old Jets” breaking hearts in September. But an improbable comeback win against the Cleveland Browns in week two had Noon thinking that “there was some coin magic in the wacky win.”
As the season went on and head coach Robert Saleh’s group put up stunning, back-to-back dubs over the Green Bay Packers and then the Denver Broncos in weeks six and seven, the quarter quarterback was feeling the juju. A week later he accurately assessed that Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots would ground the hopeful Jets — a small silver lining for Noon in an otherwise humbling loss.
Although they were 5-3, Noon was 8-0.
“At the time I was thinking, ‘There’s potential here and there’s starting to be more buzz around the coin,’ ” he said. “Then I figured if the Jets somehow beat the Bills in week nine, this thing is going to just absolutely explode.”
Somehow, QB Zach Wilson and his squad managed an odds-defying win over the Super Bowl favorites from western New York: As Noon predicted, it was bedlam among the Jets faithful. Even the NFL tweeted about Noon’s picks after the Jets-Bills game as major sports betting companies reported on the hysteria as well.
“After that game ended my phone didn’t stop buzzing for three hours straight. It had to be over 30 people who reached out to me, and I didn’t recognize most of their numbers, saying things like, ‘I bet on the Jets because of you,’ ” Noon said.
“That was when people wanted to start talking to me about the coin and I was getting invited onto podcasts, asked to attend tailgates at MetLife, had people asking about me at the stadium … people would text me that they had friends who ‘want to meet the coin guy.'”
Embracing his sudden fame, Noon started selling T-shirts that read, in green lettering, “All Hail the Magic Coin” just beneath a picture of the 1994 quarter he used — and still keeps by his bedside.
Fittingly enough, 1994 was the season that Dan Marino and the Miami Dolphins crushed the Jets’ hopes of winning the AFC East with a fake spike that led to a game-winning touchdown. The irony is not lost on Noon.
But last Sunday when the coin mandated a Jets loss, it looked like the high streak was going to run out during an offenseless rematch against New England at Gillette Stadium.
Deadlocked at 3-3 with a handful of seconds remaining, a faulty special teams play by the Jets allowed Patriots rookie Marcus Jones to run a punt 84 yards into the endzone, securing a mind-boggling victory for New England.
It was the first punt return touchdown in the NFL this season.
“Everyone just immediately blamed me — my Twitter was more nuts than ever,” said Noon, who tweeted out his dismay at accurately calling the Jets loss that dropped them to 6-4.
“I say this with full sincerity, I wanted the coin to be wrong. I can’t root against the Jets,” Noon said. “But it was just this holy crap moment, like this thing is still right. And for the Jets to lose like that, it really feels like there’s some voodoo magic going on with my coin with some of the way these results have just panned out.”
Noon also has the Jets — who benched Wilson for Mike White — losing to the Chicago Bears this Sunday afternoon, but picked them to win until the final week of the season against the Dolphins to lock in their 11-6 record. Then, it’s two wins in the wild card and divisional playoff rounds, followed by yet another heartbreak one game shy of the Super Bowl in the AFC championship.
Of course, Noon would much rather be wrong than right in the final prediction — but he’s elated to see what good the coin has brought thus far.
“I have people come up to tell me that they never watched football before [and] now they’re Jets fans because of my coin. I mean, even though that might not be the best life decision for sports fandom,” Noon said.
“Just to see the Jets community kind of come up and come together over it — through all the dark times recently — it makes me smile.”
