(
)
If you don’t think the Jets have a chance against the Patriots, then you do not know the NFL, and you certainly do not know the Jets — or Rex Ryan.
If Mark Sanchez plays the way he did over most of the first 59 minutes against the Colts, if he plays the way he played the last time in Foxborough against the Patriots, then no, the Jets won’t lay a glove on Bill Belichick and Tom Brady.
But what if he doesn’t? What if Sanchez plays his best game and Brady doesn’t play his best game? Is that possible? Of course it is. Is it the only way the Jets can win? Maybe.
But the point here is: This is no Mission Impossible.
Belichick is the league’s best coach, by far, and has been for a decade. Brady is the best quarterback this season. The Patriots are the best team. And none of it guarantees Belichick and Brady a fourth Lombardi Trophy together.
The Jets can look to Super Bowl XLII for comfort. The Patriots were 111/2-point favorites over the Giants that night. Who imagined that Eli Manning would win MVP honors and the imperfect team would end the Patriots’ perfect season?
The Jets are 8 1/2-point underdogs for Sunday’s rubber match, aka World War III. All anyone seems to remember is the 45-3 Boston Massacre on Dec. 6, three days after the Jets were emotionally devastated by the loss of Jim Leonhard. The Jets won the September meeting 28-14, before Randy Moss was exposed as a slouch and even after Darrelle Revis was hamstrung by his training camp holdout.
“I think you throw the first two games out,” Jason Taylor said yesterday on CBS. “This game is for kinda all the marbles to move on to that AFC Championship game, and regardless of what happened in Week [13] or whatever that debacle was, we’ll regroup and be ready to go this time.”
What ought to concern Belichick most when he dissects Jets-Colts isn’t Sanchez’s resilience in the last minute, or the way Revis took Reggie Wayne away, or how Antonio Cromartie looked like a threat to take a kickoff return to the house. Or how Ryan combined brains and brawn to hold the great Peyton Manning to 16 points. Or how frisky LaDainian Tomlinson looked and how powerful Shonn Greene looked and how the offensive line practically drove the Colts back to Baltimore.
It is the fact that the Jets believe they can withstand anything, overcome everything, and they fear no one.
And hate the Patriots maybe more than Brady hates the Jets.
Ryan may have buried the football from the Boston Massacre at the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center, but he won’t bother trying to bury the memory of that humiliating night when Belichick rubbed it in.
Belichick may have the advantage of an extra week of preparation, but Ryan can counter by summoning every ounce of his motivational genius to whip his Jets into full-blown us-against-the-world mode. His grenade last week dissing Brady’s work ethic had to be a calculated dagger designed at toying with the pretty boy’s head.
God only knows what tricks Rex might take out of his bag. A Gisele Bundchen lookalike sent to the press room to fawn over him? A droll, monotone delivery mimicking Belichick’s? An invite to Joe Pesci to answer questions as Danny Woodhead?
The only common ground that Ryan and Belichick will find this week is Belichick reminding everyone what a menace these Jets are and Ryan reminding everyone what a menace the Jets are.
The Gillette Stadium faithful will deluge Ryan with foot taunts and signs, a risky tactic because it will only serve to further rally his players around him.
But it always comes back to Sanchez. It is a testament to the Jets’ physical and mental toughness, to Ryan’s trickeration, that they could prevail on a night when, until it counted most, Sanchez was off the mark. The Patriots are too stout for Ground and Pound to dominate. But the Patriots are young on defense, and it should not be lost on Sanchez and Brian Schottenheimer that Packers backup quarterback Matt Flynn strafed them for 251 yards and three TDs (with one pick-six) in a life-and-death 31-27 loss in Foxborough.
This is bigger than the biggest game of the year. This is The Second Season, and there are more playoff-hardened Jets (Tomlinson, Santonio Holmes, Cromartie, Taylor, for instance) than Patriots.
“I remember late in the fourth quarter,” Tomlinson recalled, “as the Patriots were talkin’ and yappin’ about the game that night, and I said to a couple of the guys, ‘You guys got us tonight, but we’ll be back.’ ”
Don’t count Sanchez out.
Don’t count the Jets out.
Yes they can!
Mission Possible.
steve.serby@nypost.com