For the first two minutes and 44 seconds, the people inside the Meadowlands had been loud, and they had been raucous, they filled the dying stadium with the same kind of rancor with which they’d filled the parking lots for hours and hours beforehand.
It was noisy, yes.
But lurking just beyond the noise were all the old anxieties, all the old worries. Marvin Lewis had said he wouldn’t simply lay down, and as everyone would soon discover he wasn’t lying. Carson Palmer was playing. Chad Ochocinco was playing. Could the Jets lose this game? Seventy-eight thousand voices screamed no way.
Seventy-eight thousand memories silently screamed something else.
PHOTOS: JETS CRUSH BENGALS, 37-0
And then the ball was in Brad Smith’s hands, and the past few weeks that was as comfortable a place as it can possibly be if you happen to cheer for the Jets. A few weeks ago in Tampa, Smith executed a fake punt, throwing for a key first down and setting the tone for a Jets beat-down of the Buccaneers. Last week, before the city of Indianapolis went all to hell, Smith returned the second-half kick-off and all but announced that the Jets intended to fight for their playoff lives to the end, no matter if the Colts went with Peyton Manning or Curtis Painter or Marty Domres.
Now, on third-and-seven, sixth play of the opening drive of a game the Jets absolutely had to have, Smith had snuck behind center, replacing Mark Sanchez, and he backed up into the shotgun position, and Nick Mangold snapped it to him, and in a flash he was through the line of scrimmage, he was into the secondary, he was running a straight and true path toward the end zone, interrupted only by Bengals cornerbacks Leon Hall and Johnathan Joseph.
Hall and Joseph ultimately caught Smith, dragged him down, tried to punch the ball loose, couldn’t. By the end of the play, the ball was sitting on the Cincinnati 1-yard line, and a few moments later it was in the end zone, nudged their by Thomas Jones, and the Jets had a 7-0 lead, and it was clear and apparent that the Bengals weren’t going to steal the season away – not this week, anyway – and it was clear and apparent that the Jets weren’t going to send their fans into spasms of self-loathing again. Not this week, anyway.
The Jets would win the game, 37-0, and they would storm off the field with a ninth win, and would soon receive one of those official invitations to the playoffs on official NFL stationary that Herm Edwards used to show off a few years back. They would earn themselves another Sunday, another piece of football season and a huge chunk of redemption.
And here’s the thing, shocking as it sounds now, impossible as it would have seemed just two weeks ago:
They are going to be a hell of a tough out.
The Bengals already know that, and even if the second half tonight turned into a farce – made that way by the Jets’ dominance, by the way, not by any kind of Bengals capitulation – they are surely aware that they will have to play their very best next week. If they don’t, either Indianapolis or San Diego will find out the same thing.
Jets have their flaws, of course. We saw them all across the first 15 weeks of the season. They are 9-7 on merit, same as the Colts are 14-2, same as the Chargers are 13-3, same as the Pats are 10-6. But they have a defense that can look positively bulletproof sometimes, and tonight seemed ready to chase the Bengals back to the Ohio River to try and preserve a shutout. They run the ball with a pair of fierce backs named Thomas Jones and Shonn Greene.
And now they have Smith, who would add another touchdown later in the first half, who seems to have finally found a place of prominence in the Jets offense, his number now appearing all over the Jets playbook, and all over the field. The Jets are missing the leading-man quarterback that the Colts and the Saints and the Pats and the Vikings have, but they have just about everything else you could possibly want heading into the playoffs.
A few weeks ago, that seemed destined to be the looming tragedy of this season, a capitalized WHAT-IF to last all through the offseason. Now it is an opportunity to scare the hell out of a few folks. A banner in the parking lot said it a few hours before kickoff: “WHY NOT US?”
Why not, indeed?