FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — All across the country, the lights went out one by one like the closing scene in an old episode of “The Waltons,” football fans succumbing to the ugliness on their television screens and the weariness in their eyes, bidding good night to one of the most grotesque games you’ll ever see.
“I don’t know what to say,” Rex Ryan shrugged when it was over, when his Jets came up 13-10 losers against the Patriots in a game in which you had to truly love one team or the other to stay with over “Family Guy” reruns.
Ryan was still too distraught over one terrible defensive slip up — the Jets inventing a new defense, the “Cover-Zero,” as Tom Brady hooked up with Aaron Dobson for the Pats’ only touchdown barely two minutes into the game — and with his team’s four turnovers to be in much of a chatty mood.
“All that matters is wins and losses,” he said. “I’m paid to win games.”
Still, when the Jets finally dry off after splashing around in an evening monsoon, when they sit and watch the gruesome evidence on film, they may learn something about themselves, and may get a hint as to how they can make this season something more rewarding than a long, joyless march to invisibility.
They need to embrace the ugly.
“We’re always going to keep competing,” Ryan said.
That much we know. Two weeks into the season, underdogs both times, they have now twice managed to bleed a game dry and survive to the final minutes. That’s a hell of a way to survive week to week but so far they’re one to the good and one to the bad, and could just as easily be 2-0 as 0-2 by playing that way.
They are not going to win style points, not with a rookie quarterback, not with so many receivers with Quaker State fingers, and not when so much of their success is going to rely on their defense making just enough plays to keep the other teams’ playmakers muttering to themselves. They will never be especially pretty to watch.
And that’s a good thing.
“We’re going to fight,” defensive end Muhammad Wilkinson muttered, looking and sounding every bit as hacked off as his coach. “You don’t have to worry about that. We’re going to get after you all game.”
They slithered and slathered across the field all night, mostly doing what few have ever done to Brady, turning him into a frowning, frothing ball of discontent. TV viewers who weren’t clicking off their sets were surely shaking their fists at them, wondering what’s become of Brady and his usually deep supply of offensive weapons — especially those who’d jumped on a 12-point spread, believing Brady could turn Betty White into a deep threat if he had to.
But something kept Brady in check Thursday night. Something kept him screaming at receivers who were running wrong routes, and forcing him to throw behind receivers running the right ones, and stacking his running backs time and again.
Something kept this game from getting away from the Jets when it looked like it was going to get away from them early, after that first TD, and something kept them close as Geno Smith started to gain a little momentum in the middle of the game, and something kept them clinging to life even as Smith reminded you the best thing about rookie quarterbacks, sometimes, is they can always be better next week.
“Regardless of the positives,” Smith would say of his adventurous three-interception night, “the negatives hurt us.”
Good for Smith for feeling that way, for demanding full accountability with only 120 minutes of football in his system. And good for the Jets for refusing to succumb after Brady’s early slicing and dicing, They forced the Patriots to punt 10 times for the first time in 10 years. They held Brady under 50 percent completions for the first time in four.
And afterward they weren’t looking for consolation prizes and lovely parting gifts, Ryan answering a softball question praising his defense across the game’s last 58 minutes thusly: “Yeah. Whatever that’s worth.”
This is what’s worthwhile: Ugly. Uglify. Uglification. There may be no single person in America who’s not a Jets fan who would want to see even one minute of that the rest of the season. That’s fine. The Jets should want it no other way. Bless this mess.
Embrace the ugly.