Bill Belichick sounded glad yesterday that the Jets earned another crack at his Patriots — and not just because New England drilled Gang Green by 42 points last month.
According to Belichick, both sides deserve a chance to settle this season’s “best team in the AFC East” debate once and for all Sunday in Foxborough, Mass.
“We split with them [this season], and now it’s best two-out-of-three,” Belichick told reporters in an afternoon conference call. “Probably the way it should be.”
Talking a day after the Jets’ dramatic, 17-16 wild-card win at Indianapolis, the Patriots’ coach seemed relaxed — as he probably should have been, considering his team had the weekend off after posting a 14-2 mark that was the NFL’s best.
While Gisele Bundchen’s lesser half was on Broadway with his supermodel wife Saturday night taking in “Lombardi,” Belichick was home checking out the Jets.
Belichick claimed to be impressed by what he saw from Rex Ryan’s team, so much so that Belichick said — with what sounded like a straight face — that it rendered the Patriots’ 45-3 thrashing of the Jets on Dec. 6 an afterthought.
“It’s a big challenge for us,” Belichick said. “I don’t think the last game [or] the first game … I don’t think that’s going to have a whole lot of meaning.”
Belichick was including the Jets’ 28-14 home win over his team in Week 2 on his list of games between the two hated rivals.
Predictably, Belichick would not allow himself to be drawn into a war of words with Ryan or the Jets.
Belichick shrugged off Ryan’s comment last week that Peyton Manning is more of a self-made quarterback because he doesn’t get coaching help in Indianapolis while Tom Brady has Belichick to lean on in New England.
Asked for his reaction, Belichick said: “I think you have to ask Rex or somebody else about that. … I’m worried about getting our team ready.”
Belichick praised Mark Sanchez, who was nearly perfect in the decisive second half Saturday night.
“I thought he did a good job,” Belichick said. “[He] made some clutch plays that they needed to make there at the end of the game. He’s obviously a good quarterback — he’s led them to the playoffs two years in a row.”
The closest Belichick appeared to come to a dig at the Jets was saying “they’re pretty much the same team” when asked to compare them to the team the Patriots pounded by six TDs last month.
Otherwise, Belichick didn’t feel the need to say much to add to the hype of Sunday’s showdown.
“We all know this is a one-game season,” he said. “They know it. We know it.”