PASSING FANCY: Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez had a shaky day, but managed 306 passing yards and a touchdown and hit Santonio Holmes with a big pass in overtime to help set up Nick Folk’s game-winning field goal in a 23-20 triumph over the Dolphins. (Anthony J. Causi)
MIAMI — It was precisely three minutes past five when the ball left Nick Folk’s foot, when it sliced through the uprights 33 yards away, when the Jets, the Dolphins, and the remaining few thousand stragglers in the Sun Life Stadium grandstands were finally granted parole from this unsightly slog of a football game.
The Jets? They weren’t even going to pretend this was anything other than a jailbreak, a dash for the airport — or a limp, depending on which Jet you’re talking about — with this 23-20 victory stashed in their valises.
There were no mad celebrations, no wild embraces. If you were simply looking at the field for reaction, it was hard to tell if Folk’s kick was good or not, truth be told, a mixture of exhaustion and exasperation muting the merriment around him.
“Did we get breaks? We certainly got some breaks,” coach Rex Ryan said, not bothering to fumble for euphemisms to camouflage the four-hour tangle he had just been a part of. “We feel very fortunate. We expected to win, but my gosh …”
He was smiling. It was probably going to be the last one he enjoys for a while. Watching the DVD of this game will be like watching a slasher flick, both offenses looking hapless and both defenses playing fine until they absolutely had to. There will be the reality of Darrelle Revis’ busted-up knee, the Jets hopeful for an absence measured in weeks, not months.
“Nobody said it was going to be easy,” safety Yeremiah Bell said.
No, nobody did. And as this is the NFL, nobody is going to require the Jets to defend the victory in order to retain it, it’s theirs. They are 2-1, they go back to New Jersey for a three-game home stretch guaranteed a share atop the AFC East with two division wins already banked.
If at first blush it’s hard to imagine them anywhere near the same weight class as the 49ers (who suddenly have their own issues) and Texans the next two weeks, that’s another bout of acid indigestion for another day.
“We did what we needed to do to steal a victory here,” Santonio Holmes said.
Actually it was Holmes, as much as anyone, who helped carry out that caper, who turned in his first 100-yard receiving game in 22 months, who caught nine balls for 147 yards including a 38-yarder that set up the winning field goal in overtime, who was even nice enough to refer to himself in the third person for everyone.
“I just played Santonio Holmes football,” he said, and the fact is, the Jets have been sorely missing a diet of SHF. Two years ago, on their way to 11-5 and a second straight AFC title game, they won a slew of games — at Detroit, at Cleveland, against the Texans — just like this one, unapologetically, unabashedly unappealing games that counted just as much as the odd 60-minute gem.
“You can’t teach resiliency,” Mark Sanchez said, “and you can’t necessarily coach it.”
So that is the narrative they will pursue this week, because the alternative is too alarming. Revis’ knee. The hamstrings of Stephen Hill and Dustin Keller. The many, many ways this game could have fallen into the wrong hands: Dan Carpenter’s two missed field goal attempts; Ryan Tannehill’s Sanchezian pick-six early in the third quarter.
And, of course, the time out Dolphins coach Joe Philbin requested — and was granted — seconds before Folk’s first try at the game-winner was batted down by an army of onrushing Dolphins. Ryan and Folk insisted they heard the whistle, meaning they knew the play would be ruled dead before they saw the horror of a block.
“Those guys up front kill themselves to keep those rushers away from me,” Folk said, “and when they hear the whistle, they stop so they can save themselves for the next play.”
So Folk shook it off, watched Dolphins players grab their facemasks in agony when they realized what had happened, then calmly bisected the uprights on the reboot. On an afternoon stuffed with imperfection, that allowed the Jets to fly north with their season intact, however tenuously.
“I feel a lot better looking for corrections after a victory than after a loss,” Ryan said.
Hopefully he has a big, empty notebook and plenty of pens when he starts pursuing those corrections. He’s going to need them.