J-E-T- S Mess, mess, mess
They win, but with more QB drama
PLUS: GIANTS BEAT RAMS IN LONDON
DARRELLE Revis has had a Hall of Fame career, has been one of the very best ever to play the position of cornerback. He owns a Super Bowl ring. When the Jets flirted with significance a few years ago, back-to-back trips to the AFC Championship game, it was Revis whose talent and gravitas gave them a sense of belonging.
Revis has no time for moral victories. He is not easily seduced by one football game. And yet …
“We have a window,” Revis said. “If we win some games, we can put ourselves in a pretty good position by the bye week.”
It’s funny what a victory — even one that came as filled with drama and intrigue as this one did — can do for a football team. Six days earlier, the Jets basically had to be scraped off the turf in Glendale, Ariz., seeming as dead and lifeless as a team can look. They were 1-5. They already looked 1-15.
They beat the Ravens on Sunday at MetLife Stadium, beat them 24-16, and though the record still is abysmal (2-5) and the buzz around this team still is muffled (at best), winning puts everyone in a good mood. Well, everyone except Ryan Fitzpatrick perhaps, but we’ll get to him in a second.
“I never lost hope,” head coach Todd Bowles said. “We’ll get better one game at a time.”
“We’re staying the course,” said running back Matt Forte, the most essential Jet on this day, with 30 carries, 100 yards and two touchdowns. “We have to have that mentality.”
And this mentality, too: of a No. 11 seed in the NCAA Tournament, adopting the old standby mantra of survive and advance. Yes, the Jets are fully aware last year’s Chiefs ran the ridiculous gauntlet of 1-5 to 11-5 (eking into the playoffs by a game over the Jets, in fact), but Kansas City was such an outlier, its recovery so improbable, you can’t even measure it rationally.
Especially because it wasn’t as if the Jets were shaking their heads after losing a couple of gutbusters. They were 1-5 on merit, having mostly gotten their legs broken along the way, not their hearts. Winning on Sunday wasn’t so much a relief as a necessity. It’s still a week shy of Halloween. It can’t be over yet.
It almost was. The day got off to an ominous start when punter Lachlan Edwards Luis Castillo-ed a snap, handing Baltimore seven easy points. The secondary looked primed for another pound- ing, allowing a 53-yard pass play on the Ravens’ next possession. It was 10-0 Baltimore and 13-7 Baltimore and 16-14 Baltimore.
And then a couple of funny things happened.
Well, actually, the first thing wasn’t so funny. That was Geno Smith, who had played adequately in his ascension to QB1, leaving the game with a banged-up knee. That allowed Ryan Fitzpatrick to come trotting back onto the field, and it allowed him a crack at redemption, which he seized: 9-for-14, 120 yards, a touchdown, no picks and a 115.2 QB rating.
At the same time, Buster Skrine — another Jet who had become the poster child for all their ills, who had one of the worst games a defensive back possibly could have in Arizona last week, so many penalties committed and big plays allowed it was hard to keep track of them all after a while — had his own remarkable recovery, picking off Joe Flacco, returning the ball to the 3-yard line and setting up the field goal that put the Jets up for good.
“I jumped the route,” Skrine said. “I knew it was do-or-die, but I also knew we needed to make a play, and it worked out for me.”
It worked out for Fitz, too, though to listen to him talk, it sounded like someone had shot his dog first.
“When your owner stops believing in you, and your GM stops believing in you, and your coach stops believing in you, sometimes all you have is yourself,” was one of his cheerier takeaways.
Interesting take from a guy who’s supposed to have the team’s interest somewhere significantly higher than his own and one that will be revisited this week if Smith is healthy, and Bowles goes back to him (as he should), since Smith’s assessment of the game was the one you would hope both of them (and all of them) would: “The important thing is we won the game.”
They won the game, and they get a crack at winless Cleveland next week. The window may be open only a crack, maybe less than a crack. But the Dolphins follow the Browns, and the Rams follow the Dolphins. If they can survive three times and advance three times? Then the window really may seem a little more inviting by the bye week after all.
But only if they survive. And only if they advance.