The Bengals are daring the Jets to run the ball against them Sunday.
The Jets have accepted the dare.
“We’re going to run the ball and pass the ball however we see fit,” offensive tackle Austin Howard told The Post. “We’re not going to let their defense determine what we do, and when we do it. We respect their defense, we know they have a good group of guys, but that’s not going to deter us from running the ball or going through with the game plan that Marty’s [Mornhinweg, offensive coordinator] going to give us.”
Howard and the Jets are aware of this quote from Bengals tackling machine linebacker Vontaze Burfict: “They’re going to figure out probably in the first 15, 20 snaps that running’s going to be pretty hard against our front seven.”
Howard: “I believe that we’re going to let our actions speak louder than our words. We don’t have to go out there and boast about this and that. We’re going to go out there and play our game. We’re not going to change for anyone.”
Rex Ryan returned to his Ground & Pound against the Patriots, with 222-pound braided bully Chris Ivory (34-104) relentlessly and violently plodding forward like the football Smokin’ Joe Frazier.
Burfict also labeled Ivory and Bilal Powell “regular backs,” which, in truth, would be more of a slight to Adrian Peterson or LeSean McCoy or Marshawn Lynch.
But unbeknownst to Burfict, Ivory rumbled for 117 yards and two TDs in Cincinnati as a Saints rookie in 2010. It just so happens Ivory, who came into the NFL as a free agent, was told by his agent the Bengals said they would draft him in the seventh round.
“They said I didn’t pass my physical. … That’s what I was told,” Ivory told The Post.
He rejects the notion the snub adds fuel to his fire four years later, but smiles when you ask him whether his big game against them was just coincidence.
“Yes sir, just coincidence,” he said.
Mornhinweg could be tempted to trust Geno Smith more with Adam “Pacman” Jones replacing shelved cornerback Leon Hall, but the big uglies, a rookie quarterback’s best friends, don’t care the Bengals boast the NFL’s No. 8 run defense.
“Our guys don’t lack for confidence now, in any aspect,” Mornhinweg said. “I suspect that that’s been their mentality from Day 1.”
Ivory’s raging-bull mentality didn’t surface only recently.
“He runs hard,” stepfather Kenny Gilliland said by telephone, “because he’s got things he wants to prove to other people.”
Ivory was a fullback in the triple-option offense at Longview High School in Texas.
“He’d hit the hole screaming,” Longview coach John King said. “He played with reckless abandon. He could run over you, he could run by you, he could make you miss. He probably was under-recruited because he was a fullback.”
Ivory never gave up on his NFL dream following injury-marred stops at Washington State and Tiffin University in Ohio, and the near-death nightmare of his mother Judy, who contracted viral meningitis seven years ago.
“She’s very blessed and I feel very blessed as well that she’s still living,” Ivory said.
Teammates appreciate his bruising running style.
“A running style that I would not want to be on the other side of,” a chuckling Matt Simms said, “just because it’s extremely violent, and aggressive and downhill.”
Willie Colon said, “For defenders, you understand if you’re going to tackle him, you better bring your pads. He’s not going to just be one of them backs you can just take down with an arm. It kind of gets us riled up too when he’s able to finish big runs and kind of stick it to defenders trying to hit him.”
Ivory wore the Patriots down.
“It definitely takes a toll because he’s not really trying to make anybody miss. He’s going to come right downhill and try to enforce his will on people,” Tommy Bohanon said.
Here he comes.
Here they come.
“We face one of the best defensive lines in practice every day,” Howard said, “so we know what we can do. And there’s nothing like being an underdog and going out and having success when nobody thinks you can, and we don’t mind it at all.”