JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — If you could cleanse your mind, unclutter your memory, if you could simply look at the game in front of you without context or clamor, what you saw out of the Jets yesterday might have almost made you smile.
There was the defense, snarling and aggressive and getting after the Jaguars and their quarterback, Chad Henne. There was the offensive line, blowing people off the line, opening gaping holes for the running backs, mostly keeping the quarterback out of harm’s way.
And what of that quarterback, Mark Sanchez, handing the ball off twice as much as he was slinging it in the air, managing the game like Connie Mack, and when necessary completing a critical 36-yard pass, beautiful read, beautiful throw, late in the fourth quarter?
Yes. In a vacuum, you could almost savor this 17-10 victory for the Jets, you could celebrate the fact they’re on an honest-to-goodness hot streak, two wins in a row, three out of four, three games ahead of them with records worse than their own, playing as they did in their ground-and-pound days …
“Yes,” Calvin Pace said at game’s end. “It did feel … familiar.”
The problem is, your mind still races and your memory clutters, and these are the Jets, after all, and so context is mandatory and so, as always, is clamor. And so it is imperative to point out that these were the now 2-11 Jaguars against whom the defense excelled, against whom the running backs collected 155 yards.
And it is ever more so necessary to mention that even on a day when Sanchez was adequate (if spared the more complex elements of the playbook), when he surrendered the ball only once (on a strip sack, not on a poor decision), he was again a co-star in the continuing folly of what the Jets have done with the quarterback position.
Before the game, Rex Ryan had decided to go against his gut and activate three quarterbacks, rewarding Greg McElroy for his quarter-plus of competence against Arizona last week, rewarding Tim Tebow for being raised near Jacksonville, rewarding Sanchez by not airbrushing the franchise quarterback from the travel squad.
“I liked the way he played,” Ryan said. “I liked the way all of us played.”
It says something about both the expectations Ryan has demanded for his team and for the low comedies that have sabotaged them that it’s almost impossible to take seriously the fact the Jets, after 13 games and 14 weeks, still have a season to play for.
The Bengals, Steelers and Bills helped them magnificently yesterday, all losing at home to inferior teams. The Jets now have three games left against teams that sport a 14-25 record. They still need plenty of help, sure, but the stars don’t have to align any more crazily than they did three years ago.
But the idea of this falling into place for this team? In this year?
Put it another way: Do you see that happening? Because even the Jets sound dubious, at best, at seeing that happening. Well, except maybe for Ryan, who opened his press conference by saying: “I see the Cowboys won.”
Well, someone has to believe.
“We’re starting to play better,” Pace said, “and so hopefully we can ride the wave, carry it all the way in. And then get some help.”
The Jets are a team desperate to channel Al Pacino’s advice in “Any Given Sunday,” now, a team all about the 6 inches in front of their faces, the here and the now, and that’s the only way they can be because the big picture surrounding this team is always so capable of swallowing them whole.
Consider: Not only did Ryan not start the owner’s favorite, Greg McElroy; he didn’t even give him a uniform yesterday when he was forced to only activate two quarterbacks. In a way, you have to admire a guy who acts like he’s working on a lifetime contract like that, regardless of what the record says.
That’s the executive-tower view. In the trenches, the Jets are focused on Tennessee, on next week, on the knowledge that no matter what happens on Sunday they will still be alive when they walk on the field in Nashville. Maybe that’s a small prize. But for now, it beats the alternative.