The Jets have been a Jekyll and Hyde football team this season, following a win with a loss over the first six weeks. At 3-3, they enter Sunday’s game against the Patriots having played better football than most expected while at times they’ve looked every bit like the inexperienced club that might struggle.
But there comes a time during every season when a team has to make a stand and declare whether it is a contender or pretender for the post-season. That time comes Sunday afternoon for the Jets when they play the 5-1 Patriots at MetLife Stadium.
Coach Rex Ryan stopped short of saying his Jets need to beat the Patriots to win the AFC East or projecting how much a victory over Tom Brady and Bill Belichick could impact the rest of the season. But if the Jets do become the surprise of the NFL and wind up playing in January, a win Sunday could be looked upon as the real turning point toward success.
“All you do each week is prepare for a specific opponent to the best of your abilities,” Ryan said Friday. “You’re not looking at more than it is. I use a division game as a game-and-half because I think that’s how important it is. But you don’t go in saying, ‘If we can do this and if we can do that we’ll have more success down the road.’ ”
That’s coach-speak from Ryan, who is trying to say the politically correct thing even if he opened his press conference Friday by jokingly reporting, “Nobody had sex on the team last night.”
Seriously, the Jets are a team still searching for the kind of credibility a victory over the Patriots will bring. It will open eyes outside the locker room and build confidence inside it.
“There’s a formula for making it to the playoffs and going to the Super Bowl and that’s to win games,” right tackle Austin Howard said. “We understand if we’re going to win the division or have a good shot at post-season play, division games are huge. We understand how big of a game this is for us.”
The Jets have been a quietly confident group all season, especially on defensive, where Mo Wilkerson, Quinton Coples, Sheldon Richardson and Damon “Snacks” Harrison have rekindled memories of the Sack Exchange.
But if the Jets haven’t surprised themselves, perhaps they’ve caught the rest of league by surprise, especially with their 30-28 victory over Atlanta. As of now, the combined record of the teams the Jets have beaten is 3-13 and two of the Jets’ losses have been to the 3-3 Titans and the 1-4 Steelers.
It means the Jets are still searching for a victory against a quality opponent and to earn the kind of validation a win over the Patriots would bring.
“We believe we have a lot of talent on this team,” Howard said. “We’re never going to have that perfect game. You have to practice at how to respond when things go wrong. It’s a mentality.”
Good teams can overcome the kind of adversity Brady and the Patriots present. They can overcome the activation of tight end Rob Gronkowski and a team that has won 12 straight games over AFC East opponents. They might also be able to overcome one or two mistakes by a rookie quarterback.
The Jets have shown flashes of being able to do that in their wins against the Bills and Falcons. But they’ve also failed to stop their meltdown against the Titans and couldn’t rally against the Steelers.
“I believe we do have enough talent to beat any team,” quarterback Geno Smith said. “If we come out and play our A-game and we go out there and play sharp and we stick to what we’ve been coached to do, I think we can beat anyone.”
Contenders or pretenders? We’ll find out Sunday.