NASHVILLE, Tenn. — There comes a time in every season, in every sport, when a team not only has the opportunity to prove something to the world, but to themselves as well. And that latter point — that’s the one that matters more.
There was a time late in Charles Barkley’s career with the Suns when they stumbled early on against a couple of lesser teams. Barkley explained it away this way:
“This early in the season,” he said, “the [lousy] teams don’t know they’re [lousy] yet.”
Are the Jets a lousy team that doesn’t yet know how lousy it is? Are they the luckiest 2-1 team in the NFL … even if it isn’t exactly impossible to conjure a scenario where they could be 3-0 this morning?
We will know a whole lot more about the answer to that question by 7:15 or so Sunday night than we do now. We will know a lot more about what this season may contain once we see what’s in store for them against the Titans, who themselves are a surprising 2-1 team that just as easily could be 3-0.
“You want to get out of the blocks fast,” Jets coach Rex Ryan said earlier in the week. That especially applies to teams from whom little is expected — and you can place the Jets and the Titans out in front of that line.
Based simply on how dreadful the game these two teams played last December was — so ugly it made last week’s Bills-Jets game look like the ’58 title game — it wasn’t hard to see both these teams seemed headed for lean times. The Titans already were playing out the string. And by night’s end, the Jets were, too.
“I think both of these teams came into this year with a lot to prove,” Ryan said. “I know we did. And based on what I’ve seen, I think Tennessee did, too.”
One of these teams will get to feel awfully good about themselves by nightfall, 3-1 at the quarter pole and defiantly in control of its path, capable of fully believing in the season even if there will remain a legion of doubters trailing them, waiting for the shine to dull.
And it should be the Jets.
Put it this way: It’s the Jets who will face the longer and bumpier recovery time if they stumble in Music City, if they drag a 2-2 record back east with them with the specter of a trip to Atlanta next Monday kicking off an October that looks to fall somewhere between “brutal” and “sadistic.”
That, of course, is based on our preconceived notions of who we thought the Jets were supposed to be. And none of those preconceived notions included a 3-1 record, not in a year that seemed earmarked for 4-12 just 15 minutes ago.
And, yes, sure: As easy as it is to think the Jets could be 3-0, it’s even easier to rejigger the first three weeks, kick around a few what-ifs, and have them at 0-3. One less stupid tackle. One more grievous penalty. And we already could be speaking of these Jets in the past tense.
But we aren’t. So this is a team still very much believing it has a future this season, one that absolutely can speak of itself in the present, with opportunity awaiting them, with the chance to add another line to their message. The Jets took an offseason of disrespect and a preseason of disbelief the right way: So far, they’ve used it as fuel.
“I don’t think anyone in this room cared about what other people thought about us, or said about us,” said Geno Smith, the kid quarterback around whom so much of the Jets’ optimism — and angst — revolves. “We wanted to wait and play and then let them form an opinion.”
So far, frankly, it’s mixed. So far, it seems the rest of the NFL is plenty happy to dismiss 2-1, to plaster it with asterisks, to assume the deluge is coming sooner, not later.
And maybe they’re right.
For now, they’re not the ones who need to believe. The ones in green are the ones who need to believe. Maybe it’s just a matter of the Jets not yet knowing how [lousy] they are yet. But if they continue to believe, who are we to say otherwise?