One man’s misfortune is another’s opportunity. No question, Shonn Greene and Sione Pouha ran with theirs all the way to the AFC Championship game.
Statistically, the Jets got better against the run after Kris Jenkins, one of the NFL’s preeminent run-stuffers, tore an ACL in Game 6. In the absence of the 2008 NFL’s all-purpose yardage leader, Leon Washington, Greene averaged five yards per carry in the regular season and totaled 263 yards in two playoff wins until a rib injury forced him to the sidelines right after halftime Sunday.
But a dead-last-in-the-NFL Indianapolis running game gained 101 critical yards while the top-rated rushing Jets, perhaps too stubbornly, pounded out only 86.
“I knew, and not just yesterday, that there would be a play out there where I could create a momentum change,” said Washington, who was watching at home with friends, one of whom had the temerity to bring a Colts fan.
This what it came down to for the Jets: They got shut out in the second half of the AFC title game while their game-changer didn’t even have the strength in his broken right leg to kick a Colts rooter out of the house.
“All good, if it would have been a Patriot or a [Florida] Gator fan, it would have been different,” the ex-Florida State Seminole and, he vows, not ex-gamebreaker, said with a smile. The Jets missed a guy who could have been a minimal-risk stretch of the playpen where an interception-prone rookie quarterback was confined for his own good.
“The way San Diego gets [Darren] Sproles out of the backfield, Leon kills you,” Jets coach Rex Ryan said yesterday. “A short pass becomes a long gain.
“He’s a matchup nightmare and hopefully we’ll be able to take advantage of that again real soon.”
In the likely event of no new CBA by March, Washington will be tendered by the Jets and then will have 2010 to earn the set-for-life contract he could not agree upon last offseason.
“I should be ready by training camp, expect to be 100 per cent by the first game,” he said. “Like I told guys today, I want to work my tail off to help you guys. It’s going to be fun around here.”
Beats walking in a therapy pool, the extent of Washington’s current fun, or doing leg lifts, which will have to be Jenkins’s joy now that he can no longer watch the 2009 Jets grow.
“I don’t get stressed, I’ve done this before,” he said of rehab yesterday. “I’m a veteran player who works with younger guys to get better in case something like this happens.
“It was a beautiful thing to watch. Anybody who is a Jets fan has to be excited.”
They watched the Jets become the eighth-toughest team in the NFL to run against without him.
“A great credit to those guys filling in,” Ryan said. “They became familiar with our system, understood the techniques, it was matter of time before we got better.
“But guys who make the Pro Bowl aren’t even close to Kris, not just a space eater but a huge man who can move. A rare guy.”
The Jets were a rare team in rallying from 4-6 to two postseason wins despite the mid-season losses of two Pro Bowlers. There was plenty of optimism as they put their last six months into big trash bags, where this season’s accomplishments will belong come July.
Guarantee us that Jenkins and Washington will be all better and we’ll predict the same about the Jets’ days ahead.