Tom Brady has spent the past nine months trying to get the Jets out of his head.
Sunday in Foxborough, the Jets plan on getting back inside it, and staying in it.
Brady & Co. may be just what Dr. Rex Ryan ordered following the Ravens debacle.
“I’m not really focused on what he said, and how he felt after that game, it really don’t matter to me,” Darrelle Revis was saying yesterday.
“We expect Brady to come out throwing punches, and we’re gonna throw punches back. . . . I mean, that’s basically how I could sum it up.
“We don’t expect him to hold off, or hold back anything. We want him to bring his best out, so we can play.”
This is what Brady told WEEI in Boston less than two months ago about Jets 28, Patriots 21:
“The Jets loss, I’ll never get over that. That’s as painful a loss as we’ve ever had here as a team.”
This was what Brady told the Boston media yesterday: “That was a long time ago. So that game doesn’t have much bearing on this week. We’re a different team.”
And this is what he told the New York media: “Honestly, it’s pretty far out of my mind at this point. You watch it, you study it, but the emotional part of it, I’ve kind of put off. I’m very much into what we’re trying to do this year and trying to understand what their defense is trying to do this year. There is not much we can take from that game emotionally last year that can help us this weekend.”
With all due respect, that sounds like a Brady bunch of bull to me.
“We tried to rattle him, the playoff game, and we did,” Revis said. “We got him uncomfortable back there. That’s what people say about Tom, is try to rattle him and get him moving in the pocket a little bit.”
Anyone who knows Brady knows that he is arguably the most competitive player in the NFL, now playing at the top of his Hall of Fame game. You know he “can’t wait” to shut up Bart Scott, for one. (And Antonio Cromartie, for another.)
“This was the quarterback that couldn’t get touched,” Scott crowed afterwards. “(The media) talk all about how great he’s playing, but what Rex pulled out for us was his last three playoff games — what his record was and what his rating (66)was then. . .”
And: “He started looking for the rush when there was no rush. He thought after a certain amount of time somebody was coming, he was fidgeting. . . . Most quarterbacks don’t like getting hit. They get hit and they turn into a totally different person.”
It will be up to Revis to slow Brady and Welker’s assault on the record books. Revis marvels how their chemistry rivals Brady’s old chemistry with Randy Moss.
“He’s very fast, he’s quick, usually there’s a nickel back on him or a dime back on him, he reads them very well,” Revis said. “He breaks away from your leverage, if you’re inside, he’s breaking outside, if you’re outside, he’s breaking inside. . . ..When you watch him and Tom play, it’s like, ‘If I break this way, throw it outside, if I break that way, throw it inside away from the defender.’ They’re very smart of how they work together and how they break Cover 1s on man coverage.”
Brady will throw to the receiver who is open. Welker is usually open.
“You could see him going more vertical now,” Revis said.
Added Ryan: “This past week, in particular, they ran a lot of Cover 2 and he ended up beating them with some corner routes as the inside slot receiver,” Ryan said.
The Jets sacked Brady, confused by coverage and knocked around, five times last January. “If he knows what coverage you’re in, and knows what front, knows what pressure you’re in, then he’s gonna carve you up,” Ryan said. “The chance you have, is if there is some confusion there. You don’t present an obvious picture to him.”
Mark Sanchez, eager to bounce back from his nightmare, isn’t concerned with dueling Brady.
“Win, lose or draw, I need to be the hardest-working guy in this building,” Sanchez said yesterday. “So to come back on Wednesday and work through it Wednesday and show these guys, ‘I’m The Man, I don’t care what anybody says. I’m The Man in this building, we’re gonna win this game,’ that’s how I gotta be. That’s what I gotta exude. That’s the confidence I need to have.”
The confidence all of them will need against Brady.
steve.serby@nypost.com