INDIANAPOLIS — The ball flew through the uprights with about a quarter of a mile to spare, just another Adam Vinatieri moment to cap off another Peyton Manning two-minute workshop. There were 53 seconds left and the Colts led by a deuce, and there were 65,332 people inside Lucas Oil Stadium who believed — who were convinced — they’d just seen their Hall of Fame quarterback and their Hall of Fame kicker buy them another week of season.
But there were 45 dissenters in the house. They were on the far sideline.
“Fifty-three seconds?” linebacker David Harris said later. “If there’s one thing we’ve seen this season, it’s that a lot can happen in 53 seconds.”
PHOTOS: JETS BEAT COLTS, 17-16
You may recall that stomach-churning segment in the middle of the season when the Jets lived week-to-week like degenerate gamblers constantly skipping out of the way of their shylocks, eking out a win in Detroit one week, doing sleight-of-hand tricks in Cleveland another, going full-blown Houdini against the Texans.
It was then that some precincts of the football cognoscenti termed the Jets lucky, all but ordering them to apologize week to week for their great escapes. The Jets never did that. All along, every time, they insisted that not only weren’t they giving those games back, but in the end they’d turn out to be useful down the road.
“We learned to have a lot of resolve,” Braylon Edwards said.
“We’d done it before,” Bart Scott added. “Fifty-three seconds, 40 seconds, whatever we get, we’ll take advantage of it. We’ll do what we need to do.”
Scattered through the crowd were the fiercest true believers, fans who wanted so badly to believe. Back home, so many more surely cussed their televisions when Vinatieri’s 50-yarder bisected the uprights. But even in those most fragile football souls, there had to be a sliver of hope. Because of Detroit. Because of Cleveland. Because of Houston.
Fifty-three seconds? They could stay tuned for 53 seconds.
“That’s us,” Rex Ryan said. “That’s Jets football.”
AUDIO
MARK SANCHEZ ON THE JETS’ LAST-SECOND FIELD GOAL
REX RYAN: ‘WE PROTECTED OUR QUARTERBACK’
PEYTON MANNING ON THE COLTS’ LOSS
BRAYLON EDWARDS ON SANCHEZ’S MATURATION
DARRELLE REVIS ON FACING THE PATRIOTS NEXT
LADAINIAN TOMLINSON: ‘NO ONE BELIEVES IN US’
For 59 minutes and seven seconds, it had been a clinic of Jets football. Ryan had relished this chance to play chess with Manning, and he succeeded. He kept blitzes to a minimum, he kept switching coverages, he limited Manning — still great, but hurt by a diminished corps of receivers and the fact that Darrelle Revis all but took an eraser to Reggie Wayne (one catch, 1 yard) — to a solitary touchdown.
Offensively the Jets had played a second half straight out of their textbooks, putting together two long, clock-eating, grinding drives heavy on the fresh legs of LaDainian Tomlinson and Shonn Greene, light on the balky shoulder of Mark Sanchez. On so many levels, those first 59:07 should have already punched the Jets a ticket to Foxborough.
Instead, they were 53 seconds from the scrap heap.
Then, in the huddle, with all those hollering Hoosiers impatiently waiting for them to expire, the Jets felt something else entirely. “Belief,” Edwards said. “A very powerful sense of belief.”
Antonio Cromartie — burned to a crisp by Pierre Garcon on the Colts’ touchdown — stoked it with a terrific return. Sanchez took the baton from there, finding Edwards for 9, finding Santonio Holmes for 11, finding Edwards — following an unforgivable timeout by Indy, during which Edwards lobbied for the ball on an out pattern — for 18.
Suddenly, amazingly, impossibly, there were three seconds left, and Nick Folk was trotting out to the field, and the 65,332 people — minus those pockets of green — were reduced to an inaudible whisper. Suddenly, amazingly, impossibly, Folk was knocking it through from 32, and the clock was frozen at 0:00, and the score was frozen at Jets 17, Colts 16, and the Jets were storming the field.
And Peyton Manning was trudging off it.
“Finally,” Rex Ryan said, “he gets to feel the way I’ve felt every other time I’ve faced him.”
Finally, Jets fans get to feel what the Other Guy has always felt at the end of these games. For once, it was someone other than Mark Gastineau roughing the quarterback, someone other than Richard Todd throwing the end-zone pick, someone other than Doug Brien boinking a game-winner off the crossbar.
This time, the Other Guy left too much time on the clock.
This year, 53 seconds were more than enough to get the Jets down the field, and all the way to Foxborough.