The funny part about schedules, especially football schedules, is that they all but dare you to jump to conclusions as fans. You do it every year, the moment next year’s schedule is printed, right? Game by game. Week by week. Win. Win. Loss. That’s a win. That’s a loss. Win. Loss. Loss. Win. Win.
That’s the “soft part of the schedule.”
Those five weeks? I’ll sign up for 3-2. I’ll give my left arm for 4-1.
Charles Barkley had a terrific take on this years ago, when he was playing in Phoenix and the Suns lost an early game they shouldn’t have lost.
“This time of the year,” he said, “the bad teams don’t know they’re bad yet.”
When you saw the Raiders early in the Jets schedule, out of habit you probably put a check mark next to the name. It has been so long since the Raiders were even credible, let alone competitive.
Maybe you knew better, knew they had swollen their talent level, upgraded their coaching. Maybe you took into account it would be Oakland’s home opener, and a charged-up Black Hole can reduce even the strongest-willed teams to jelly. So maybe it wasn’t as much of a surprise to you that the Raiders schooled the Jets 34-24 on Sunday afternoon.
And maybe it makes what Jim Leonhard said yesterday sound all the more telling.
“The biggest thing is, you watch a film like [the Raiders game film], you learn from it, and you throw it behind you. You can’t let Oakland beat you twice,” the Jets safety said. “We lost that game. It is what it is. We can’t do anything about it at this point. You learn from the corrections and you move on.
“That’s the way life in the NFL works. You have to take the next 24 hours, whatever, put the emotions behind you and move on to Baltimore.”
See, because no matter how you felt about the Raiders in April or June or August, the fact is that what already seemed to be a rugged two-game stretch — at the Ravens this Sunday night, at the Patriots next Sunday — has already become an even more rigorous three-game stretch.
We all know about the bitterness that exists between the Jets and the Patriots, something that will probably last for decades after Bill Belichick peels a hoody over his head for the final time. But the wrinkle of life with the Jets that is both new and deeply felt is the relationship with the Ravens.
If Rex Ryan learned defense at the foot of his father, he became an expert practitioner in the employ of the Ravens, winning a Super Bowl ring and earning a reputation as a defensive savant. And though his move to New York — and subsequent recruiting of some of his favorite coaches and players — didn’t have near the rancor of, say, Eric Mangini trying to empty the refrigerator on his way out the door in New England, Ryan still clearly has some strong feelings about his time in Baltimore.
And the fact is, the Ravens’ defense hasn’t exactly turned into Mike D’Antoni’s Knicks since Ryan left, either. And, of course, the one time the teams faced each other the last two years, the Ravens won, on the road, in the kind of 10-9 defensive struggle Ryan seems to crave — as long as the numbers are properly aligned on either side of the hyphen.
So this was going to be a hellacious assignment anyway, back-to-back weeks staring at two terrific teams and two rivalries packed with emotion and personal history. All of that off a disappointing, if not entirely stunning, loss in the East Bay.
“It wasn’t up to out standards, and doesn’t sit to well with me or anyone else,” Ryan said yesterday. “We’re going to find out about ourselves big time these next couple of weeks. I think this is just a bend in the road, not the end of the world.”
Even the worst-case scenario — which involves waking up 2-3 in 13 days — isn’t the end of the world. But for a team whose last two seasons ended on foreign turf, whose mission was to make sure they spent at least a portion of this coming January near the New Jersey Turnpike, it might feel that way.
Leonhard is right. Good teams lose games all the time.
They just don’t re-lose them the next week.