The Patriots faced fourth-and-10 from the Jets’ 28-yard line on Sunday at Giants Stadium — fourth-and-the-game, really, with 1:06 remaining and no timeouts left up one of the sleeves of Bill Belichick’s hoodie.
Seemingly every other year, the Jets’ play on defense would have been to drop multiple defensive backs into coverage and try to prevent a big play down the field, hoping no Tom Brady pass got behind them.
But not in this 16-9 victory over the Patriots, and certainly not with rookie head coach Rex Ryan’s defense.
“No prevent,” cornerback Darrelle Revis said yesterday. “We don’t even have that in the playbook. With Rex, there’s no ‘read and react.’ It’s more like, ‘This is your job. Go get it done. And if this doesn’t work, we’re going to adjust and find something else to defeat this team.’
“It almost looks like we’re the junior high bully trying to get the offense’s lunch money. We love it, because it’s more loose, guys are flying around and it’s just crazy. That’s why we have so much fun out there. Guys are smiling, guys are trusting each other. We’re having fun with it.”
Patriots’ Wilfork: Jets ‘kicked our butts.’
By Ryan’s count, the Jets delivered 23 hits on the 47 times Brady dropped back to pass Sunday, a “combo platter” of quarterback hits and pressures.
“If you don’t knock him down,” Ryan said, “but you still hit the quarterback physically? Then that’s a hit.”
Even by his standards, Ryan said, 23 hits in one game is “high.”
“I don’t believe that’s the highest total I’ve ever had,” he said. “I know we had one where the guy was out with ‘general soreness’ the next week.”
This is the Jets’ new world.
Former coach Eric Mangini’s more controlled, disciplined, traditional 3-4 gap defense had its successes here. Remember, the Jets were 8-3 at one point last season and thinking seriously about being a part of the Super Bowl.
This Ryan system, though, is different in so many ways for the defensive players. Perhaps the first and most important way it’s different is how it appeals to the psyche of those players.
Even when the Jets were 8-3 and flying high last season, Revis said, the feeling was different.
“It wasn’t as fun as this,” Revis said. “We had a lot of success last year, but this whole atmosphere this year since Rex came here is more relaxed, more laid back, more loose. Nothing against Mangini, but everybody was just kind of tight, didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to do that and there was tension, tension, tension.”
Now the only tension is on the opponents’ side of the ball.
Brady, for example, looked a lot more uptight Sunday than he usually does while picking defenses apart.
And it figures Titans quarterback Kerry Collins won’t get as much sleep as he normally would this week as he thinks about the hell Ryan’s defense is preparing to unleash on Sunday at Giants Stadium.
“I’m sure we’re going to have a scheme that definitely takes on the formula of the last two games,” cornerback Donald Strickland said.
“I’ve never been in a defense as aggressive as Rex’s system,” Strickland said. “Usually, teams have two, maybe three blitzes. We have so many blitzes, you don’t know who’s coming. It’s exciting — especially when you see how the opposing offenses react to it and are not able to pick it up.
“It’s all Rex. He brought that style. He carries himself that way. And now his team is adopting it. It’s very exciting when you can shut down the No. 1 QB to no touchdowns.”
Cornerback Lito Sheppard said the reason for the Jets’ success is simple.
“We’ve got one smart-[butt] head coach. He really knows his stuff,” Sheppard said. “The game plans they put together, when we come in on Wednesday and see it we’re like, ‘Wow, here we go again.’ When we get out there on the field, it seems to come together. We’re really starting to feed into the concept of what this defense is about.”