The Super dreams have begun in earnest for the Jets, just 48 hours from Sunday, just 60 minutes from the Super Bowl. They can’t help themselves now. With each passing hour, the dream becomes clearer and clearer. Some of them were Joe Montana as little boys. Some of them were Jerry Rice. And so on and so forth. Now it’s their turn, and their time. Only Peyton Manning and the Colts can shatter their Super dream now.
“I’ve won a lot of Super Bowls already in the backyard,” Jim Leonhard said, and smiled, and it was as if he were back in tiny Tony, Wis. “If I had one thing to go back and do again, I would have won a few AFC Championship games, so I knew what that felt like.”
Leonhard and Rex Ryan, the Jets’ rookie head coach, lost to the Steelers in last year’s AFC Championship game, while both were with the Ravens. It hasn’t stopped the diminutive safety from visualizing playing in Super Bowl XLIV in Miami. “I see a lot of big plays,” Leonhard said, and smiled again.
Do you intercept any particular quarterback in the Super Bowl?
“It doesn’t matter — that’s a blur,” Leonhard said. “That other team never really shows up. It’s always you. There’s not a whole lot of color, there’s not a whole lot of purple or gold in there, but I do know that I’ve played pretty well in all my Super Bowl experiences.”
So you make a pick and take it to the house?
“That’s one thing I’ve seen,” Leonhard said.
Understand that in no way are the Jets looking past the Colts.
“This is actually a bigger game than the Super Bowl,” special-teamer Wallace Wright said. “This is the game.”
It’s the game that allows the imagination to run wild.
Wright, a terrific special-teamer, hasn’t caught a touchdown pass since preseason, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be David Tyree — or Rice, his favorite — in the Super Bowl. There he is, wide open. “I mean, as wide open as you can get,” Wright says. “The one I think about, the defender fell, beating the defender, and then he got up and chased me from behind on a 9 route down the sideline.”
Does Mark Sanchez throw you the pass?
“Absolutely. That’s our quarterback.”
You catch it in stride?
“In stride, yeah.”
Who fell?
“I don’t necessarily remember who it was.”
Did you keep the ball?
“Did I? I took a shower with it, you know what I’m saying? I didn’t let it go!”
Wright also makes a thunderous tackle on the opening kickoff.
“Everybody watches the opening kickoff, everybody’s in front of the TV,” he said. “You want to set the tone for the game, and what better way to set the tone than to go down there and just smack somebody in the mouth?”
Darrelle Revis, Aliquippa, Pa.: “Growing up, that’s the biggest stage you want to play on and be on. They got the offensive MVP and the defensive MVP. . . . I don’t play offense, so it’d be great to get the defensive MVP if I could.”
Jay Feely, Odessa, Fla.: “In my rookie year, I watched [Adam] Vinatieri make that kick for New England and win the Super Bowl for them against St. Louis. You want to be in the position, and you want that opportunity, and I think that every kicker desires that opportunity. I think if I could script it, we’d be in victory formation at the end of the game, and we’d be taking a knee. But if it comes down to a kick, yeah, you think about it, you visualize it, you put yourself in that situation, absolutely.”
Dustin Keller, West Lafayette, Ind.: “In my dream it’s not even a close game. Our offense is running the ball all over the place, passing the ball over the place, defense is playing lights-out defense, and . . . I have a career day. I have a couple of touchdowns; had to jump over a couple, run over a couple.”
Have you dreamed about it this week?
“During the day I have, not when I went to sleep but . . . I see it comin’. I see it comin’.”
Jerricho Cotchery, Birmingham, Ala.: “I envision myself running out of that tunnel, and the camera flashes and all those things.”
Nick Mangold, Centerville, Ohio: “When they show everybody after the game, confetti’s falling and everything, and people with their families.”
Lito Sheppard, Jacksonville, Fla.: “An interception, a key knockdown to seal the victory, or scoring a 100-yard touchdown. Those type of plays are history in games like that, and you just want to be a part of history.”
Now make Sunday Peyton Manning’s worst nightmare.