NFL

Feely’s missed kicks no help to Jets

Two weeks ago, Jay Feely had played the football equivalent of the one-man band: kicking off, kicking field goals and punting for the Jets. He quickly emerged as a feel-good hero, a significant part of the fabric of what the Jets were doing, as reliable as anyone on the roster.

Yesterday, in a 30-17 AFC title game loss to the Colts, he felt fate’s flip side.

Twice, on the opening possessions of both halves, the Jets drove into field-goal range and asked Feely to get them points. Twice he missed.

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The first, a 44-yarder, stung because it prevented the Jets from breaking the ice in a scoreless game.

The second, a 52-yarder, probably hastened the inevita ble, preventing the Jets from padding a four-point lead and handing Peyton Man ning and the Colts ex cellent field position.

“The first one, I hit it almost too well,” Feely said. “It sailed and then it knuckled.”

Told that Rex Ryan thought the second one might have been the result of a poor snap, Feely demurred.

“No,” he said, “those are kicks I have to make. In a dome, without any elements, I have to find a way to get those two balls through. It’s extra tough because of when the kicks happened, on the opening drives of both halves. Those were both momentum-shifters.”

Feely said he had little problem clearing the crossbar from as deep as 60 yards out in pregame warm-ups, and “I felt really good up to 55 yards,” which is what made it especially hard to stomach when he botched the two attempts.

He also wound up connecting from 48 yards on the day, with 2:11 left in the first half, the connection that pushed the Jets out to their largest lead of the day, 17-6.

“You can say, ‘Yeah, we lost by 13 points, so how much did those kicks really matter?’ but the fact is those are points you aren’t putting on the board and it’s pressure you aren’t putting on Peyton Manning,” Feely said.

“That’s what makes those killers.”