INDIANAPOLIS — Entering yesterday’s game, the Jets’ Ray Lucas had done some truly positive, eye-opening things in his burgeoning career as an NFL quarterback.
He’d shown he can be a spark to the team. He’d shown fire, shown how much his teammates rally around him, and shown he can put his team in position to win with good, old-fashioned conservative football without making the big mistake.
Yesterday, however, presented a different challenge for Lucas in that it was the first time he had to show that he could direct his team to victory under the pressure of the fourth quarter and a deficit.
In the previous two games, Lucas did a fine job helping the Jets build big leads and play the front-runner, holding on to those leads.
Yesterday, he needed to direct a comeback, and he fell short.
Though the Jets’ 13-6 loss to the Colts would suggest he failed miserably, that would be too harsh an assessment of Lucas’ performance — particularly because he probably made his finest throw as a pro on that fateful play to Wayne Chrebet on the Jets’ final drive.
Chrebet, though leaping in the air and contorting his body to get two hands on the ball, uncharacteristically dropped it, and so the record shows that Lucas is 2-2 as a starter.
“Offensively, we didn’t get the job done, and our defense played awesome,” a bitterly disappointed Lucas said afterward. “A set of threes [two FGs] is not going to get it done.”
Asked if it was the Colts’ defense that was the difference, Lucas said, “It was on us. I take it on me. I’m the head of this offense. We had all the opportunities in the world to beat [the Colts] and we didn’t get it done.
“This [stinks],” Lucas went on. “It’s horrible. It’s worse than when I threw that interception [at Giants Stadium in the Colts’ 16-13 win earlier this season], because we gave this game away. It’s ridiculous.”
Coach Bill Parcells called that last throw by Lucas to Chrebet “a heck of a throw.”
“That’s all you can ask for in that situation,” Parcells said.
Lucas, who was 12-of-22 for 102 yards in the game, now has gone three consecutive starts without turning over the ball. His only turnover was that INT against the Colts last month.
He has, however, had some problems in second halves. Entering yesterday, in first halves, Lucas was 37-of-49 for 318 yards, 3 TDs and 1 INT for a 104.0 rating. In second halves, he was 13-of-32 for 114 yards, no TDs and 2 INTs for a 24.7 rating.
Yesterday, he was 6-of-12 for 56 yards in the first half and 6-of-10 for just 46 yards in the second.
Asked about the Jets’ playoff hopes, Lucas said, “We might be out of it for real, but in my heart and mind there’s no way I’m going to give it up. I’m just really disappointed.”