Willie Colon looks around and doesn’t see a rebuilding team with a rookie quarterback and weapons who apparently think it is better to give than to receive. He doesn’t see a running back-by-committee to pity. He sees a tough team for a tough town that, in the immortal words of Bobby Bonilla, will show you the Bronx in a Big Apple minute. A quality and a mentality that can take you places no one else thinks you can possibly go.
“I think we can take the division,” Colon tells The Post.
When the naysayers who smoke the objective pipe stop laughing, we will let the right guard speak his piece.
It started when I asked him what the toughness level is on this Jets team that awaits the Bills Sunday.
“As far as like 1 to 10?”
“Yeah.”
“About a 7. … We could be better.”
“How do you get better?”
“Finishing games. I think one of the biggest things we have to do mentally, when we get four minutes and our defense gives us back the ball, they shouldn’t be back on the field.”
“Have you ever been on a 10?”
“Yeah. Pittsburgh [in the 2008 season]. Super Bowl year.”
“Describe the infield mentality of a 10.”
“From the defensive side, there’s been games where I haven’t seen an opponent get past three or seven points. … Special teams, I can remember, we had at least three or four guys that will fly down and put the hammer on people. … We had a great punter, we had a great kicker in Jeff Reed at the time. And offensive line-wise, we relished running the power game. We kinda got charged up, and then, all of a sudden, a lot of teams come by the third quarter, they were tired. They didn’t want to see the power no more.
“They got tired of seeing big Chris —. You couldn’t sack Ben [Roethlisberger]. They got tired of ‘James Harrison coming at me,’ they got tired of finding Troy [Polamalu].
“I just remember teams, by the third quarter, submitting. Like, ‘Hey guys, all right, you guys won.’ You see it in their eyes, you see it in their body language. That’s when you know you got a tough team.”
“Can this team be a 10?”
“I think we’re still kinda finding our identity, I think it’s coming. I think each week goes on, we get tougher. I think the defense is playing lights out, and I think they keep giving our offense a chance to get better. I think overall, we could be a 10 by the end of the year without a doubt.”
(Look, these Jets are far from those Super Bowl XLIII Steelers. But let our Jet continue).
“You can never underestimate the human spirit. When you get guys that grab on each other, lean on each other, the sky’s the limit. I’ve been with Steeler teams that people say, ‘Oh, this team doesn’t have it.’ Then sure enough we’re competing for the championship.”
“Was there a sense after the New England melee that this team had that kind of fight?”
“I do. I think the biggest thing, when I looked around the locker room, everybody was hurt, everybody was crushed by it. It wasn’t this sense that, ‘Oh well, maybe we’ll get ’em next time.’ That’s the worst feeling to have, I think. If you’re a true competitor, it should hurt, it should piss you off, you should feel something in your stomach that’s uneasy and unsettling. When I looked around the locker room, you could tell guys were pissed off, guys were angry, guys were heartbroken, ’cause we had a chance to pull it off in Foxborough. We had the Patriots on their heels, but we didn’t execute, we didn’t get it done.”
Colon, hefty fine aside, knows protecting his teammates’ backs in Foxborough is well worth it.
“If your brother’s in a foxhole, you better be with him,” Colon said. “I can’t go to sleep anytime if my brother was out on the street and he got jumped and I wasn’t there to go rescue him or go fight next to him.”
“Can a team that’s a 7 on the toughness scale hang in the division race?”
“No question, no question. I think the sky’s the limit for us, man. Obviously this is a big game for us Sunday, we gotta win it, you don’t want to go 0-2 in the division. I think we got enough guys, enough firepower where we can take this thing, but we have to do it together.”
“You can take what thing?”
“1 think we can take the division.”
“You just made headlines with that.”
“I don’t care. What do you want me to say? I’m supposed to say the Dolphins or New England can take it? I believe in the Jets. I believe in this team. I believe if we stick together and do what we need to do, We can take it. We can ball.”
“You’re going to be a popular figure with Jets fans.”
“I just speak my heart.”