NFL

Blitz only way for Jets to beat Patriots

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The Jets’ Monday night mission against the Patriots in New England is simple: Pummel the Pretty Boy.

The Jets will not escape Gillette Stadium at 10-2 and with control of their division and conference destiny unless their defense gets into Tom Brady’s grille, makes him uncomfortable and messes up that carefully coiffed Justin Bieber hairstyle of his.

This is how the Jets win the game: Make Brady as uncharacteristically uncomfortable as the Chargers made Peyton Manning look on Sunday night. Manning, who’s had the upper hand on virtually everyone he’s played, was flinching in the face of the San Diego pass rush like a spooked rookie.

The Jets’ defense, which has been up and down this season and has gotten burned too often by big pass plays against its blitz, needs to make Brady flinch the way Manning flinched.

Former Jets coach and current ESPN analyst Herman Edwards was saying yesterday the way to get to Brady with the blitz is not from the outside, because Brady feasts on defenses when he can step up in the pocket. Edwards said the Jets need to come at Brady from up the middle.

“The good quarterbacks don’t panic when the blitz comes from the outside, because it’s not in their face,” Edwards told The Post. “When teams come from the outside, that’s like taking candy from a child for Brady because he can read it; he can see it.

“If you come at him from up the middle, he can’t step up. That’s what happened to Peyton Manning. He couldn’t step up and throw. There was nowhere for him to go. Any quarterback wants his pocket clear. He doesn’t want the trash in front of him. It’s like playing in a phone booth. When you want to step up and open the door, you can’t, because someone’s standing in front of the door.”

It’s not about sacking Brady for the Jets. Brady is among the least-sacked quarterbacks in the league (he’s been taken down only 15 times). But that doesn’t mean you can’t rattle him.

Case in point: In the Jets’ 16-9 win over the Patriots last year at Giants Stadium, they didn’t sack Brady once, but they hit him more than 20 times, and he was way off his game.

In fact, when the Jets played New England later last season, they sacked Brady twice and lost the game.

“It’s not about sacking him,” Jets defensive lineman Trevor Pryce said. “You’re not going to sack him. He gets rid of the ball too quickly. The best thing you can do is force him to make a throw maybe a second earlier than he wants to. That’s worth its weight in gold.”

The blueprint for that was on display in that game last season at Giants Stadium.

“We got after him,” Jets safety Jim Leonhard recalled. “You have to hit him and you have to get bodies around him and make him uncomfortable. If he’s sitting there playing 7-on-7, he’ll light you up. You have to disrupt his timing.”

Jets defensive end Shaun Ellis recalled that game, calling it “an overall team effort” on Brady.

“Everyone was where they were supposed to be, and we had guys flying around,” Ellis said. “We made it hard for him disguising things, showing different looks.”

Sounds easy enough, right?

“The second game you saw that didn’t work,” Ellis said of New England’s 31-14 win. “They did their homework, they scouted us. [Monday] is definitely going to be one of those games that’s a little chess match. Hopefully, we go out and jump on them early.”

Jets linebacker Calvin Pace said, “It’s going to be imperative that we get to him.”

If they don’t get to Brady, pummel the pretty boy, the Jets will limp out of Gillette Stadium at 9-3, a game behind the Patriots and scrambling for playoff position the last month of the season.

“You could very well see an 11-5 team not make the playoffs this year, so you don’t want to be one of those guys,” Jets linebacker Bart Scott said.

“The loser of this game is on the outside looking in as far as winning the division. That’s the only way you can guarantee yourself a spot in the playoffs.”

Too much time on Jets hands

Each of the Jets’ two losses this season came following a long layoff before the games.

They lost their season opener 10-9 to the Ravens, and they lost to the Packers 9-0 after their bye week. Both games represented their worst offensive performances of the season. Now they face the Patriots 10 days removed from their last game.

“Believe me, that point has crossed my mind 1,000 times already,” Jets RT Damien Woody said.

Are the Jets’ struggles coincidence?

Maybe not. Offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer conceded after the Ravens loss that he crammed the playbook with too much for that game, and he quickly simplified for the next game, the Jets’ win over New England.

“Sometimes the coaches can get carried away, putting in a lot of stuff we might not even run in the game,” Jets RG Brandon Moore said.

“We can’t overthink,” Woody said. “Hopefully we don’t fall into that trap this week. We’ve got to be who we are. We can’t be worried about cooking up these exotic game plans. Just be who we are and rely on the fact that our personnel can not only match up with [the Patriots’] personnel, but we can win our one-on-one battles.”

For the record, the Patriots won their season opener and their first game back after their bye week.

Jets are kicking themselves

That the Jets thought it necessary to bring veteran kicker Kris Brown in for a workout yesterday comes as no surprise, and their uncertainty at the position is their own fault.

When the Jets opted not to re-sign dependable incumbent Jay Feely in the offseason, they left themselves open to having issues at kicker. Nick Folk is a good kicker who’s helped the Jets win games this season, but his inconsistency of late has raised a red flag, alarming coach Rex Ryan enough that the team is looking at other options.

Folk, who made 17 of 20 to start the season (with one of the misses coming from 61 yards), kicked five field goals in the Jets’ 29-20 win over the Vikings, and he sent the Detroit game into OT with a kick at the end of regulation and then won it in OT.

The following week he missed three field goals against the Browns, and on Thursday at home he missed a 44-yarder and hit an upright with a PAT, leading Ryan to say in a radio interview that he’s “definitely concerned” about Folk, who’s missed five of his last 10 kicks. The Jets are 29th in the NFL in field goal accuracy (73.3 percent).

Yes, there were reasons the Jets didn’t re-sign Feely. They saved some money, and it indirectly enabled them to sign free agent LB Jason Taylor.

Folk, who’s 22-of-30 this season, might straighten out and end up being fine, but there’s no question the Jets messed with a good thing in not bringing back Feely. It should be noted that Feely is 13-of-14 at Arizona this season.