The Jets are 10-point favorites Sunday night against a team two games superior in the standings. But an NFL otherwise obsessed with the integrity of its game officially pretends to smell nothing wrong.
“The position of the Competition Committee, and affirmed by the clubs, when it was reviewed in 2005 was that a team that has clinched its division title has earned the right to rest its starters for the postseason and that preparing for the postseason is just as important as protecting some other team’s playoff opportunity,” Greg Aiello, NFL senior VP of public relations, said in an e-mail yesterday.
“That is the current policy. We are aware of the fan reaction and that is a factor to be considered. Some teams that have everything clinched, like the Giants and Patriots two years ago, choose to play all-out to continue or gain momentum for the playoffs. We expect to continue to review this issue.”
PATRIOTS’ BRADY EXPECTS TO PLAY, HELP JETS
Perhaps the undefeated season that Colts fans wanted enough to boo their team when it packed it in on Sunday didn’t die in vain. Maybe the Steelers, Ravens and Texans will be martyrs toward change should the Jets, fortunate enough to close the season against consecutive teams resting starters, make the playoffs by beating J.T. O’Sullivan rather than Carson Palmer.
A league fastidious in monitoring the reporting of injuries, that offers a $1 million reward for evidence of circumvention of the salary cap, looks the other way when Peyton Manning gets pulled in the third quarter of a game that could determine up to four teams’ postseason chances. The NFL does so in the apparent ongoing belief that requiring teams to go all-out is unenforceable.
“How can somebody tell you to play anybody?” Jets coach Rex Ryan said yesterday. “I don’t think it’s realistic.
“You can’t tell a guy you have to play your starters, and then all of a sudden they are not focused fully. Now somebody gets hurt, who is responsible for that?”
We don’t remember Bill Belichick or Tom Coughlin feeling that way in 2007, before the Patriots proudly completed the first undefeated regular season in 35 years and the Giants used their all-out effort as a springboard to a winning Super Bowl run.
Not only have we never followed the logic that Manning couldn’t have gotten hurt during the first half-and-change Sunday, we don’t understand what is so slippery about the slope of mandating that the starting quarterback, usually a team’s most important player, remain in a meaningful game until it is put away.
If the starting quarterback is still in there, so, for his protection, probably will be the starting left tackle and workhorse running back. If the quarterback comes out, he had better be on Monday’s injury list.
The Jets belatedly were fined $125,000 (including $25,000 to the departed Eric Mangini) for hiding Brett Favre’s injury last season. Chicanery is not always discovered and punished, but the NFL spends millions in attempted enforcement of the public’s trust and then looks the other way after a team turns its back on ticket-buyers and league partners by refusing to put its reasonably best product on the field.
“Those [early clinchers] earn the right to do what they think is in the best interest of the organization,” argued Ryan.
Coaches and GMs who man a Competition Committee would think that way, of course. The best interests of the game have to supersede those of any team. And that’s where Commissioner Roger Goodell comes in, or should.