IT’S A ONE-FOR-1 DEAL
Only Jets in regular-season finale stand between Pats and top seed
FOXBORO — Before enjoying a first-round bye and jumping back into the playoffs to defend their Super Bowl title, the Patriots have one last mission. With the Jets in town today as the final regular-season opponent, the Patriots need a victory to assure they secure home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, not to mention keep their positive mojo going.
They don’t want to end on a sour note. They don’t want to depend on their other route to the No.1 seed: a highly unlikely Steelers loss to the lowly Browns. They want to keep building on what they accomplished during the second half of the win over the Bills last week, and take that vibe into the bye week.
“We don’t want to lose momentum,” wide receiver Danny Amendola said. “We want to play good football at all times. We know (the Jets) will be ready. We want to end on a good note. We want to have a good week of preparation coming in, and get ready to roll.”
The Patriots, at 12-3, sit atop the AFC, and don’t want to blow their hold on home-field advantage for the playoffs by losing to the Jets.
Naturally, Bill Belichick built up the 5-10 Jets as the second coming of the 1985 Bears. Granted, they aren’t as terrible as was projected of them in the preseason — a team expected to tank and go winless in Browns fashion. Todd Bowles has had Gang Green playing hard all season.
In the Week 6 meeting with the Patriots at the Meadowlands, in fact, the Jets jumped out to a 14-0 lead before ultimately crumbling to Tom Brady & Co. This was also one of the season’s first games in which replay officials got headlines, as the Jets had a would-be touchdown overturned, as an apparent end zone catch by tight end Austin Seferian-Jenkins was reversed in the fourth quarter.
Now, with starting quarterback Josh McCown injured, and Bryce Petty taking over, it’s a different ball game, even if Belichick pumped up Petty as some kind of nascent Joe Namath.
“We’ll be challenged in all three units. We’re going to have to play better than we did in the first game,” Belichick said, referring to the 24-17 win at MetLife Stadium. “They’re better than they were in the first game. We’ll need to do a lot better than that.”
Fine. The Patriots, with newly signed linebacker James Harrison in tow and expected to suit up, do want to play better. They don’t want to have a sour taste in their mouth while sitting during the bye week and waiting on their division round opponent.
They want to be firing on all cylinders heading into the tournament, as Bill Parcells used to call the postseason.
“We just want to play some good football and have some good confidence going into the postseason,” cornerback Malcolm Butler said. “We haven’t reached the postseason yet, so it’s just about the Jets right now. We want to have a good game against them, because they’re going to give us everything they got. They do each and every year, each and every game. We don’t look at records. It’s going to be a battle.”
Said Devin McCourty: “It’s always a tough game playing against the Jets no matter when it is.”
During a conference call Wednesday, Bowles said he wouldn’t need to motivate his players, even if the football season was about to end for them.
“We’ve got some prideful guys and we fight and we understand where we are but that doesn’t mean we don’t try to go out and win every ball game,” he said. “This week will be no different for us.”
The Patriots usually like to build momentum and play their best football just as the playoffs roll around. They’re usually hitting their stride in December. They did have it rolling with eight straight wins from October to early December. The one blemish, the Week 14 loss in Miami, has them at 3-1 for December.
“I think we’ve made some tremendous improvements throughout the season. But I think this is hopefully another building opportunity for us,” special teams captain Matthew Slater said. “Our goal is to improve every time we step out onto the football field until the last game we play over the course of a football season. By no means do we feel like we’ve arrived, or that we’re playing as well as we need to be. We still feel like there’s a lot of work for us to do. And hopefully we can put another building block down (against the Jets).”
Of course, the Patriots would like to escape this game with a win and home field, and be no worse for wear in terms of injuries. But they can’t play not to get hurt. They have to go all out, or not at all.
“Any time you have the opportunity to play, you don’t take anything for granted. You give it everything you have, because that’s what the game demands,” Slater said. “Our approach will be no different. Nobody wants to get hurt, whether it’s preseason, or Week 17. We’re going to play the game the way we normally would.”