Rex Ryan wants MetLife Stadium rocking Sunday, wants the ground to shake and Tom Brady to quake in his cleats, wants the noise to pierce Bill Belichick’s hoodie and puncture his eardrums, wants it to be JetLife Stadium, every bit as loud as Arrowhead Stadium is for Andy Reid’s Chiefs, wants his team and his fans to unite as one raging, intimidating Green Monster of the Meadowlands.
As recently as two weeks ago, Tom Coughlin called on his 12th Man for help, and his Giants treated their loyal fans to a demoralizing 36-21 loss to the hated Eagles.
The fact of the matter is, it isn’t Jets fans who owe Ryan and the Jets a decibel-on-steroids Sunday. It is Ryan and the Jets who owe Jets fans a team that can finally make some noise, and make it all on the field for once instead of off it.
Starting with Victor Cruz’s 99-yard catch-and-run touchdown at the end of the 2011 season, the Jets have won just five of their past 12 games at home. The lowlight, of course, came last Thanksgiving night against the Patriots, when long-suffering fans watched the infamous buttfumble in horror.
Jets fans deserve better. Especially at these prices. Deserve better than to trudge to the parking lot green … with envy.
“All they want is competitive, hard-fighting people representing New York so … I love ‘em,” Willie Colon said.
But the Jets have to do their part.
“That’s No. 1, yeah, yeah. … We have to do our part,” he said.
No one expected the Jets to be playing a big game in the middle of October, another game that can change perceptions, if only for a week. That’s how low the bar had been set for them. But here it is. Here it comes.
“Green-out. … I encourage it. … I like it,” Sheldon Richardson said.
Even as it comes during a rebuilding season with a rookie quarterback, it comes at the right time against a battered Patriots team that may be 5-1 but scares no one and is ripe for the picking.
Nick Mangold won’t have to try to clear Vince Wilfork out of the way. A tackling machine named Jerod Mayo is gone for the season. If ever there is a time for Marty Mornhinweg to take some pressure off, ahem, Greeno Smith, with some good old-fashioned Ground & Pound, with Bilal Powell and Chris Ivory both, it is now. If nothing else, it would keep Brady and returning red zone menace Rob Gronkowski on the sidelines with Julian Edelman and his rookie receivers.
“We’ve got a lot of guys that can expand holes and open holes at the same time. … I think it’s one of our strengths,” Colon said.
If the 3-3 Jets can’t get them when the getting is good, they’ll never get them.
Jets fans can’t be blamed if they have grown weary of hearing Jets players talk about how they hate the Patriots. Better they should like the Patriots and beat them for a change.
Before Ryan can try to win back Jets fans, his first priority is winning over GM John Idzik and owner Woody Johnson, and keeping his dream job. Beating the Patriots, even as depleted as they are, would go a long way toward that aim.
It shouldn’t really matter whether the coach on the other sideline will be wearing a gray hoodie or a fedora. It shouldn’t really matter whether the other quarterback is a Teflon Tom or Ben Roethlisberger. Ryan shouldn’t have to tell his players to tell their wives they wouldn’t be taking out the trash this week because the coach wants them to rest their legs just because it’s the Patriots.
Belichick certainly doesn’t have to tell his players to tell their wives they wouldn’t be taking out the trash this week because the coach wants them to rest their legs because it’s the Jets (given Spygate, if Belichick told his players not to have sex the night before games, odds would favor 100 percent obedience, no)?
Gillette Stadium has become a haunted house of pain for visitors because of the team that plays there.
More specifically, the quarterback who plays there, and the coach who coaches there. Belichick doesn’t have to serve as town crier for Patriots fans to rally around his team, even if he hasn’t won a Super Bowl in nearly a decade, because he’s in the hunt every year for that elusive fourth ring.
The Jets haven’t won one in 45 years, for those scoring at home. The least they could do now is give their fans an unexpected surprise. After 8-8 and 6-10, after Mark Sanchez and Tim Tebow and Tony Sparano, after Darrelle Revis to Tampa Bay, the sound and the fury needs to come from Ryan’s team, before it comes from the fans, who so desperately want to scream for a Mean Green dream team.
Give them a reason.
Give them a season.