NFL

Jets say win was too tough to get

Jets linebacker Calvin Pace was sitting in front of his locker late yesterday, looking nothing like someone who had just won a much-needed football game. The Jets may have beaten the Bills 28-24 at MetLife Stadium, but Pace looked more frustrated than excited.

“Sometimes you don’t have to make it that hard on yourself,” Pace said. “There’s nothing wrong with going out and dominating teams. We go to Buffalo and dominate (27-11) and then we come here and it’s an ESPN Classic. It doesn’t have to be like that. That’s how you lose ballgames when you don’t capitalize on opportunities. But we won. I can’t be mad about that. But defensively, at best we were mediocre.”

It would have been easy for Pace to follow the company line offered by head coach Rex Ryan after the game, about how “it might have not been the prettiest thing, but we finished.” But if the Jets are really going to win the final five games on their schedule and assure themselves of a playoff berth, the defense can’t depend on being as lucky as it was against the Bills.

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PHOTOS: JETS BEAT BILLS, 28-24

A win is a win, and we understand that. But a game after Tim Tebow went 95 yards on the final drive to beat the Jets in Denver, Bills quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick took his team from its own 27 with 54 seconds remaining to the Jets’ 24 with :02 showing on the clock.

Already, the Jets had survived a dropped pass by cocky wide out Stevie Johnson, who was so wide open he might have scored had he not choked in the clutch.

“It was pretty stupid on our part to leave [him] open,” Pace said of Johnson’s drop. “But we got away with it. Sometimes you need a little luck.”

Still, it wasn’t over until fourth down, when the Jets secondary smothered Johnson to leave Fitzpatrick no chance of completing a game-winning pass.

Yes, the Jets won. But the Bills gained 336 net yards with Fitzpatrick completing 26 of 39 for 264 yards and three touchdowns against no interceptions. Johnson caught eight passes for 75 yards and one score, with many of his catches, including a 16-yard touchdown, coming against All-Pro cornerback Darrelle Revis.

It seemed as if every time the Jets scored, the Bills scored. Even a 21-14 Jets lead in the third quarter wasn’t good enough as the Bills scored 10 unanswered points before Plaxico Burress made a miraculous catch on third down and a scrambling Mark Sanchez found Santonio Holmes for a 16-yard TD with 61 seconds left.

Ryan offered some sugarcoating, saying, “There at the end you’re going to give up some things.” But Pace wasn’t the only Jet who wasn’t doing cartwheels over the win. Linebacker Bart Scott begged off interviews, saying, “I don’t want to incriminate anybody.”

Pace was simply offering real talk.

“For whatever reason, it didn’t seem like we had enough fire until it got into a dire situation,” Pace said. “Why play like that when you don’t have to? You can go out and bury a team, make it easy on yourself. I guess I just expect more from us.”

“What if Plax didn’t make that play?” he continued. “Then we’re sitting in here looking stupid.”

The bottom line is, the Jets have to play better defensively if they expect to run the table against the Redskins, Chiefs, Eagles, Giants and Dolphins. Fitzpatrick looked too much like Tebow in the closing seconds.

“We’ve got to man cover them, be a little bit better on the run and create some turnovers,” Pace said. “It’s the small things. I feel comfortable we can do that. I’m not unhappy. I’m really not. We just don’t have to make it that hard on ourselves.”