A year ago, the Giants won a Super Bowl by buying in to the Tom Coughlin slogan ALL IN.
Rex Ryan’s Jets give us BRAWL IN instead.
You continue to get the feeling the Jets are the Kardashians of the NFL, playing the part of a dysfunctional football family that cries out for attention any way, any how.
Yesterday morning it was a brawl, started when Joe McKnight threw a football at undrafted rookie D’Anton Lynn after Lynn shoved the running back out of bounds and 20 or so combatants had to be separated by Rex, who would bet on himself in any fight, anyplace, anytime. Now training camp melees are part of the fabric of the football summer in the heat of competition. A veritable rite of summer, at least when training camps featured two-a-days under a broiling sun. Jobs and careers are on the line here. Boys will be boys, and all that. It happens. Anywhere and everywhere.
But should anyone have been surprised that in The Summer of Tebow, the Jets would film their very own episode of Fight Club?
Is this what Sexy Rexy means when he talks about returning to the Ground and Pound?
Well, at least Chaz Schilens didn’t hurl a ball at Antonio Cromartie. At least Mark Sanchez didn’t toss one at Tim Tebow. At least Darrelle Revis didn’t fling one at Mike Tannenbaum. At least Santonio Holmes didn’t try fire one at Sanchez, or Brandon Moore, or Wayne Hunter, or the negative New York media.
“There’s no excuse for it,” Sanchez said. “One, it doesn’t look good, and two, it sends the wrong message to our team. We want to take care of our guys.”
The quarterback gets it. These Jets have no margin for error. They won’t be lighting up scoreboards. Bullyball doesn’t work if the bully flies out of control. Rex wants the Jets to be the Joe Flacco Ravens from when he was the defensive coordinator in Baltimore. It means the Jets cannot afford to play undisciplined football. It’s good that the quarterback recognizes it. Now it’s up to Ryan to emphasize and demand the kind of discipline it will take for the Jets to be any better than 8-8.
“Rex will address it,” Sanchez said.
Of course, one of the reasons why Ryan was so looking forward to getting away to Cortland again was for the fairly urgent challenge of fostering the team concept that broke down so dramatically last season.
So how’s that bonding process going, Rex?
The way things have gone for the Jets over the course of the past four decades plus, they should consider themselves lucky that no media members or fans were injured during the impromptu filming of Fight Club. Or Jets.
“I actually broke my hand in training camp when I was playing with the Lions,” Damien Woody said yesterday on ESPN radio.
Good thing Fight Club didn’t spill over to where some innocent bystander such as, say, Ines Sainz, might have been standing in harm’s way. Or one of Cromartie’s kids.
“I think this team does a good job of taking care of one another,” Tebow said.
When Boomer Esiason reads that one, he’ll want to cut Tebow again.
That sound you just heard was the producers of HBO’s “Hard Knocks,” which debuts Joe Philbin and Matt Moore tonight instead of Ryan and Tebow, cursing their bad fortune.
It is up to Ryan to get his Jets to channel their aggression in the right direction, at the opposing team, for a change. BRAWL IN should amount to a temper in a teapot. But with these Jets, you never know. They have not earned any benefit of the doubt. They are guilty until proven innocent.
steve.serby@nypost.com