CINCINNATI — There’s getting beat; in the NFL, you’re going to get beat. If you’re the Jets, you’re going to get beat in even-numbered weeks. Everyone gets beat sooner or later, unless you’re the ’72 Dolphins or the ’13 Chiefs.
“Getting beat,” David Harris said, “isn’t the problem.”
There’s getting hammered, and even that isn’t a felony, not in an NFL whose credo shouts: “Any Given Sunday.” The best teams get hammered, crushed, humbled, humiliated. The Jets have been hammered this season, at Tennessee, home to Pittsburgh, games that felt over within a few minutes of kickoff, regardless of score.
“A loss is a loss,” Calvin Pace said, “whether it’s 9 to 10, or 49 to 9.”
Then, there’s this.
There’s Bengals 49, Jets 9, a score that felt generous and kind, a score that could have been whatever Marvin Lewis had wanted it to be if not for his long professional friendship with Rex Ryan, with whom he goes back to a Super Bowl-winning staff in Baltimore.
There’s noncompetitive and non-accountable, which is what the Jets were from the moment they deferred the opening kickoff, the moment they gave the ball to Andy Dalton and the Bengals and invited slaughter. There’s overmatched, and undermanned, and outwitted. Ryan said this didn’t compare to the 45-3 anvil the Patriots dropped on his team’s head three years ago; he’s entitled to his opinion.
We’re entitled to ours: This was worse. This was uglier. That Jets team endured one bad week, was good enough to take its revenge a month and a half later, was good enough to play in the AFC Championship Game. That team was built on a confident, experienced foundation and knew it could find its sea legs when it had to.
This team? It is supposed to be young, and hungry. It was coming off a splendid upset of the Patriots and swore up and down the locker room they weren’t suffering a hangover from that feel-good triumph. The eyes tell a different story. The Jets weren’t just blown off the Paul Brown Stadium field; they looked as if they never belonged there in the first place.
“We took a giant step back today,” Ryan said.
“You play like this,” Pace said, “you get your [butt] handed to you.”
Yes. Yes you do. And yes: The offense was miserable, three lousy field goals, and Geno Smith regressed — again — throwing those two pick-sixes and generally looking overwhelmed. But we’ve known from the jump the Jets were going to have regular issues scoring points, a dearth of skill players and quarterbacking experience making that a weekly unknown.
But that’s not what concerns you now.
The defense, that concerns you now.
The defense has been the Jets’ great equalizer, capable of shutting down teams for quarters at a time, as it did last week against Tom Brady. The defense was good enough to allow the offense a few growing pains. The defense would keep the Jets close, keep them in games, keep them competitive. That was the plan. Mostly, the plan has worked.
Sunday it looked like Butch and Sundance running out to meet the guns of the entire Bolivian army. Dalton threw five touchdown passes. Marvin Jones caught four of them. It was 14-0 before you could blink, 28-6 at the half, which means the defense had essentially surrendered before the first Geno-ception.
“We knew it would be a challenge,” Ryan said. “We couldn’t get pressure. All phases. That wasn’t even close to how we have to play.”
Mo Wilkerson made a play, of course, plucking an interception out of the frosty air and setting up the Jets’ first three points. He also got the first and only knockdown of Dalton late in the third — a play that nevertheless resulted in a 53-yard hook-up with A.J. Green. But it was a lonely day for him. Dalton could have played in a tuxedo. The secondary was torched a dozen times. Dee Milliner, first-round-bust-in-the-making, was out of his league.
“And it wasn’t just him,” Ryan said pointedly. “We have a Pro Bowl corner that didn’t have a good day, either,” he said, referencing the burn marks on Antonio Cromartie’s back.
So, sure: Maybe 45-3 in Foxboro is the one that burns in Ryan’s memory. But this one has the chance to be far more damaging. The Saints come to Jersey next week, and if Drew Brees gets to see the same defense Dalton did, “he’ll break every record known to man against us,” Ryan said.
It was that bad. It was worse than that bad. Even good teams get beat. But they don’t get beat like that.