Steve Serby

Steve Serby

NFL

Geno Smith, Jets can’t follow big win with dud again

It is time for the Jets to get off the roller-coaster ride to mediocrity once and for all now that expectations have been raised, and that means it is time for Geno Smith to get off the roller coaster.

On days and nights when he has been better than advertised, the Jets have been better than advertised. On days when he resembles the rookie he is, days that immediately follow those precocious days, the Jets are merely the best professional football team in New York.

The Jets once again are talking about the importance of stacking wins, because they have learned the hard way you can beat Matt Ryan dramatically in his house, and it proves nothing when you lose to an 0-4 Steelers team in your house. And last I checked, they didn’t hand out the Lombardi Trophy for surviving Bill Belichick and Tom Brady at a roaring greenhouse known as JetLife Stadium.

The Jungle in Cincinnati is a treacherous place to ask a kid quarterback to take the next step, but I’m asking anyway.

The Geno roller coaster:

Game 2: Three fourth-quarter picks.

Game 4: Two picks, two fumbles.

Game 6: Two picks.

Get off the roller coaster, kid.

Yes, he is growing up before our eyes, but he isn’t a grown-up yet — more like a teenager who just got his license taking Woody Johnson’s limo out for a ride with Rex Ryan’s permission.

But with this young, ornery defense, this camaraderie and unity and hunger and defiance inside the walls of the Atlantic Jets Training Center, the bludgeoning, will-sapping Ground & Pound assault we witnessed Sunday, and the right leg of Nick Folk, the Jets have a chance to shock the world and blossom into a most improbable playoff team if the kid quarterback can only show up the rest of the way as … Robert Griffin III Lite … Russell Wilson Lite.

He is not RGIII, of course. He is not RWI, and it is unrealistic to ask him to be either.

It doesn’t mean he can’t be good enough to get this team to the playoffs in an NFL more unpredictable and parity-stricken than ever.

“I want to challenge the guys to focus a bit more and a bit extra because we do have to put together some back-to-back wins,” Smith said.

He can sure make all the throws, and he showed against the Patriots he can use his legs and be a dual threat at any given moment, which of course makes him the anti-Namath, anti-Testaverde and anti-virtually every other Jets quarterback over the years.

“It’s always been a weapon and a part of my game,” Smith said.

This doesn’t have to be a rebuilding year after all unless the kid quarterback makes it one.

Even given the ups and downs, he has handled the disturbing dearth of playmakers around him better than Mark Sanchez did over the last two seasons.

The market clearly doesn’t scare him … in fact, he carries himself as if he believes he was born for this grand stage. The game is never too big for him.

Smith (eight touchdowns, 11 interceptions) has displayed a Jeteresque, an Eli-esque same-guy-every-day demeanor and a poise and maturity beyond his years. His answer was revealing when they asked him after the game what meaning it had for him personally to beat Brady.

“There is none,” Smith said. “Tom Brady is one of the greatest quarterbacks to play this game and I’m a rookie quarterback in this league. So, the personal satisfaction for me is to get a victory for every single guy in that locker room and to be able to move on and put ourselves in a pretty good position moving forward.”

He doesn’t go to pieces and become an emotional basket case when he throws a pick-six, and it is highly doubtful you will see him mimic a Harlem Globetrotter football behind-the-back move near the goal line, or anywhere else, for that matter.

If your quarterback isn’t a fighter, you have no chance, and Smith is a fighter at the most important position on a team of fighters.

He was asked how he was able to move on and get Logan Ryan’s first-half pick-six out of his mind, and said: “For one, it wasn’t the end of the game, and it’s not the end of the world. Those things happen. I think the best sign of the type of player you are is the way that you move on from those mistakes. I don’t want to make any mistakes, but if I ever do, I try and come back and respond and be better, and that’s just the type of mentality I took at the time.”

The jury will be out on him for a long time. In the meantime, he’s 4-3. The Jets can’t depend on any genius coach getting a new rule wrong to be 5-3.

“I think now’s the time for us to start developing that consistency that we’ve been talking about,” Smith said. Get off the roller coaster, kid.