What will six days off in the middle of the football season mean to the Jets, who yesterday returned from their bye week hiatus tied for the NFL’s best record at 5-1?
The Jets, winners of five games in a row since their season-opening 10-9 loss to the Ravens, insist the break won’t derail their mission to pile up the most regular-season victories and win the Super Bowl.
“We feel like we’re still on a roll,” Jets right tackle Damien Woody said after yesterday’s light practice. “It’s an addictive feeling, winning. You just want to keep it going. That plane ride home from Denver [after the Jets’ last win] was a great feeling. We don’t want to lose.
“We don’t even know what it feels like to lose. That Baltimore game seems like a distant memory. We want to continue this ride we’re on, and we feel like we have the team to do it. Like [coach Rex Ryan] said, ‘We just want to lead the league in wins. We don’t care about statistics.’ We have goals, but ultimately we want to lead the league in wins.
“If we do that, we’ll be right where we want to be at the end of the season.”
Continuing that ride begins with Sunday’s game against the 4-3 Packers at the Meadowlands.
Ryan said his players were “popping out of their skin” in yesterday’s practice.
“Once you get on that kind of roll, you want to just keep going,” Ryan said of the timing of the bye week. “[But] for this football team, we’re better now because of the break. We’re fresher. We’re about as healthy as we can be right now. We have no excuses. Let’s just go out and play.”
The Jets will need to play better out of the bye week than they did a year ago, when they lost their first two games after the break — a blown-lead home loss to the Jaguars and a blowout road loss to the Patriots.
“We have to have great practices this week and find a way to get back into that groove,” linebacker Calvin Pace said. “Though it’s not a popular thing to do, we probably need some practices in pads. It’s on us as players [to keep up the momentum]. The biggest factor for us is not doing stupid stuff like mental errors and penalties.”
Linebacker Bart Scott said the Jets did not even lose their groove during the bye week.
“It’s not like we had winter break and we’re coming back for spring ball — it’s only a week,” he said. “This is the same thing if we win our division and we have one of the better records in the league. We’re going to have a week not playing a game, so maybe this is good practice to get ready to handle a week off.”
The Jets indeed are in early position to play for that top conference record and a playoff bye. They’re tied with the Patriots and Steelers for the top record in not only the AFC but the whole league.
“I feel like we’re striving to be the best team in the league,” Scott said. “We have a long way to go. The cream rises to the top in November and December.
You don’t want to be one of those teams that’s playing well now and not playing well when it counts the most.
“You want to play well now so you can set yourself up to have a bye week later,” Scott went on. “You want to set yourself up so you have to win only two games to get to the Super Bowl. That’s what we’re trying to do.”
Ryan said the team has not approached its peak.
“I don’t think we’re close on either side of the ball,” he said.
If that is indeed the case, then the Jets could mount a rather special run.
mcannizzaro@nypost.com