J-E-T-S, THREE WINS IN A ROW:
Believe it: Gang Green in 1st-place fight with Pats
CLEVELAND — The Jets will host the Patriots next week with sole possession of first place in the AFC East on the line. Wait a second. What year is it again? It surely can’t be 2017 when every number-crunching wizard, bloviating blowhard (present company excluded, of course) and wise-guy prognosticator envisioned an excruciating road for these tanka-licious Jets.
One, two, maybe three wins. Amirite?
Sensible homers brazenly predicted four victories. Delusional homers screamed six W’s at the risk of being publicly shamed for their cluelessness.
Oh, sure. If people still actually put pen to paper, they wouldn’t write home to mom about the Jets’ sloppy 17-14 road win Sunday against an anemic yet generous Browns squad that opted to practically gift this one to Gang Green. But hey, whatever, right?
“You’re never going to apologize for winning,” said veteran cornerback Morris Claiborne. “But we got a lot of work to do.” You got that right, Mo. The 3-2 Patriots might look vulnerable through the first month thanks to Bill Belichick’s attempt to win football games without a defense, but Todd Bowles’ 3-2 team absolutely has no shot if they replicate this mistake-ridden performance.
“It is not going to be pretty every week,” said Bowles, whose team won three in a row for the first time since their white-hot December in 2015. “We were able to squeak one out.”
Truth be told, the Jets offense sleepwalked through three quarters with just 103 total yards (including nine carries for nine yards) and one third-down conversion against quite possibly the worst team in the sport.
A quartet of Browns blunders kept the Jets from getting blown out in the first half. Rookie quarterback DeShone Kizer committed a pair of turnovers (botched pitch and interception) inside the Jets 5-yard line and rookie kicker Zane Gonzalez missed a pair of field goals before intermission. The Jets incredibly led 3-0 at the break on Chandler Catanzaro’s franchiserecord 57-yard field goal as the half expired.
“We didn’t see ourselves being in that moment before this game,” Claiborne said. “At halftime, we thought we’d (have) put this team away. But that wasn’t the case.”
The Browns took a 7-3 lead in the third quarter after Kizer was benched for Kevin Hogan before Claiborne’s pivotal interception late in the third quarter set up Austin Seferian-Jenkins’ 2-yard touchdown catch to give the Jets a lead they wouldn’t relinquish. Bowles & Co. took advantage of the Browns’ curious choice to bypass a chip-shot game-tying field goal early in the fourth quarter. A fourth-down stand set up a 97-yard scoring march capped by Josh McCown’s second touchdown pass of the half to put the game on ice.
A Bills’ loss to the Bengals helped create a logjam atop the AFC East. Even the putrid Dolphins (2-2) are in the hunt. With Buffalo on a bye next week, the Jets-Patriots winner will be all alone in first place.
“We all predicted that,” Seferian-Jenkins cracked, dripping with sarcasm.
In some ways, it’s mindboggling given the dire forecast about a team that was supposed to Suck for Sam (Darnold). In other ways, anything was possible given this pillowy soft part of the schedule. Alas, Tom Brady is slightly better than the dynamic duo of Kizer and Hogan.
Make no mistake: The Patriots aren’t world beaters. I’m still searching for visual evidence that New England’s defense actually exists.
It’s foolish, however, for anyone to overlook the reigning champs, especially a team that The Hoodie despises to his core. The Jets might have exceeded expectations to this point, but the true barometer will be the same organization that has been a perpetual pain in their posterior.
“We’re not going to lay down and we know they’re not going to lay down,” Claiborne said. “It’s going to be a big blast.”
In the meantime, the hotshots that wondered aloud whether this team could run the table — in the bad kind of a way — have plenty of questions. Are the Jets for real or nothing more than a feel-good early-season story sure to fade away?
“It’s a unified group,” said Josh McCown, who went 23 for 30 for 194 yards, 2 TDs, 1 INT and 101.2 passer rating. “And there’s power in that…. When prognosticators make their picks and make their assumptions about any team — not just us — what you can’t always tell is the chemistry. We have really good chemistry. It’s Ta special group.” he Jets haven’t exactly toppled quarterback titans during their threegame winning streak (Jay Cutler, Blake Bortles and these Browns guys). Heck, they surrendered 419 yards (including 140 on the ground) to one of the worst teams in all the land on Sunday.
I suspect that Brady and Matt Ryan might present more daunting challenges over the next few weeks, but suspicions aren’t that important right now.
Are the Jets actually more than just some tease? “We haven’t done anything,” Bowles said. That will all change if they beat the Evil Empire.