The underdog role is nothing new to Jets receiver Plaxico Burress — especially when it comes to facing the Patriots.
That’s just where Burress and the Jets find themselves this week as they head to Foxborough. They are 9-point underdogs, according to Vegas.
“It’s what you’ve got to expect if you go out and lose two games that you should have won,” Burress said. “With the fashion in which we lost Sunday night, we expect to be underdogs.
“Why would anybody on the outside, as far as analysts, prognosticators, whatever, have us going in and being able to compete with Tom Brady and a Bill Belichick-coached football team? We expect it, but it doesn’t bother us all.”
Of course, Burress made the biggest catch of his career to beat the Patriots in Super Bowl XLII when the Giants were two-touchdown underdogs.
“No doubt,” Burress said when reminded of that.
After brutal losses in Oakland and Baltimore, the Jets have plummeted from a trendy Super Bowl pick to a team no one trusts. The Jets know people are not giving them much of a chance to beat the Patriots. From former teammate Damien Woody to franchise legend Joe Namath, the Jets have absorbed a ton of criticism this week.
“I don’t know what the line is or anything else, but we got beat by Oakland by 10 points [and] got beat by Baltimore by 17,” coach Rex Ryan said. “Maybe people don’t think we’re very good, I guess. I don’t know.”
Ryan knows the Jets will have a tough time beating any NFL team, never mind the Patriots, if they play like they did against the Ravens on offense or the Raiders on defense.
“We obviously need to be a lot better than we were those last two weeks going against the Patriots,” Ryan said. “If we’re not at our best, we won’t win this game.”
The Jets were encouraged by what Ryan labeled as maybe their best practice of the season yesterday. Players said it was a crisp practice without many mistakes. The emphasis all week has been returning to what the Jets did well over the last two seasons.
“[We have] kind of just been getting back to the basics,” running back LaDainian Tomlinson said. “That’s how I would define this week, getting back to the things we do well, being ourselves, stuff we know and that’s how we’re going to get it done.”
The Jets have heard the critics this week from Woody saying he doesn’t think the Jets can turn it around to Namath questioning the leadership on the team and their offensive line.
“That’s how this league is,” wide receiver Derrick Mason said. “You’re only as good as your last game. If you lose two, then you win two all of a sudden you have momentum. But if you win two, then you lose two then, oh, you’re a terrible team. That’s how this league is. It’s a fickle league. . . . You can’t allow your emotions to get drawn into it.”
Facing the Patriots might be a blessing for the team because it’s refocused them after the Ravens debacle. There has not been time to dwell on everything that went wrong Sunday night.
The Jets don’t pretend like games with the Patriots don’t mean more. There’s always a different feeling during Patriots week.
“They are the standard-bearer in our division,” guard Brandon Moore said. “They’ve owned our division for the past 10 years or more, so it’s definitely a big challenge for us. We talked about wanting to make the playoffs and all these other things, you want to win your division and they’ve owned it, so it’s definitely a big challenge for us.”