.eulb si neerG .sdrawrof si sdrawkcaB .nwod si pU – ATNALTA
Oops. Sorry. Might need to translate:
ATLANTA – Up is down. Backwards is forwards. Green is blue.
Welcome to Bizarro World, football division, where the team everyone has been able to set their watches by is 0-5 and flailing, where the team everyone has been able to rely on for slapstick and silliness is 3-2 and a picture of harmony, where Rex Ryan is the coach pulling out the last-second miracles and Tom Coughlin is the coach who somehow winds up getting charged for two timeouts on one play, where Eli Manning looks like the quarterback in need of color-coded wristbands and Geno Smith is the quarterback coming off a game in which his quarterback rating was high enough to puzzle physicists.
Up is down. Backwards is forwards. Green is blue. Blue is green.
And how do you like that?
More pressing: How do you explain that?
“There wasn’t one guy on our sideline who didn’t feel like we were going to win that game, even after we fell behind,” Ryan said as Monday night bled into Tuesday morning, as he started to enjoy the reality of Jets 30, Falcons 28, as he probably began to ponder life as a 3-2 team, with the 0-4 Steelers upcoming, with the first-place Patriots visiting MetLife Stadium the week after that, sounding as much like his old self as he’s sounded in over a year.
“We’ve dug our own hole, so here we are,” Coughlin said as Sunday’s distressing 36-21 loss to the Eagles morphed into the depressing truth of life as an 0-5 team, with a trip to the 3-2 Bears upcoming Thursday, with a gauntlet of difficult games beyond, sounding as frustrated as he has since his team fell apart to close out the 2009 season, the year they forgot to how to tackle anybody.
Look: Jets fans, the smart ones, they understand enough to enjoy the giddiness while it lasts, to enjoy the good times while they’re still good. They understand how close 3-2 really is to 0-5 or some variant in between, and if they aren’t eager to apologize for that, it doesn’t mean any of them are keeping their January weekends free for a few playoff road trips just yet.
And Giants fans, the smart ones, the reasonable ones, also seem to understand that sometimes there is karmic payback for even the smoothest operations, that winning two Super Bowls in five seasons is evidence aplenty that the foundation is strong, even if you get an outlier of a season like this one seems destined to be.
Nothing lasts forever, after all. No matter if your normal vantage point is up top or down below.
Still, while this lasts, it does call for a little recalibration. If you are a Giants fan, for instance, it is a good time to take a deep breath, exhale, and be grateful for certain things, among them, and in no particular order:
1. Nobody, to anyone’s knowledge, has hired a small plane to carry a message across the sky before next week’s home game with the Vikings.
2. Nobody, to anyone’s knowledge, has yet organized a MetLife singalong, serenading Coughlin with “Gooooood-bye, Tommmm-yyyy …”
3. Nobody in the organization, to anyone’s knowledge, has made any unnecessary pilgrimages to the Vince Lombardi Service Area on the Jersey Turnpike.
So there’s that.
The Jets? Maybe this is as good as the season will get. There are plenty of Jets fans with decades of experience in such matters who will tell you the last team they want to see right now is the winless Steelers, that they’ve seen this script before, that the Jets are never more vulnerable than when they’ve attained a little prosperity.
That even when things look good, they’re never as good as they look.
And, sure, that’s all part of it. That’s what makes the football experience in New York so rich and so compelling, because while Jets fans and Giants fans share the same marketplace and follow the same sport, it sometimes can seem like they are actually from completely different continents, following badminton and wrestling, so different are their approaches, mindsets, personal histories and expectations.
Maybe this all goes back to where it belongs sooner rather than later. Maybe even by the end of the season. And maybe, if the Giants have a surprise for the Bears and the Steelers a surprise for the Jets, by the end of the weekend. Maybe.
.ebyaM