VICTORY SCRAP
Jets let win slip away but prove toughness
JETS running back Matt Forte didn’t want to hear about any moral victories, not after the Patriots escaped MetLife Stadium on Sunday with a 24-17 victory thanks to a controversial call and just enough mistakes by the home team to hand the defending Super Bowl champions a win.
“People might be all excited because we hung in there against the champs and played a good game,” Forte said. “But the mood in this locker room is we actually gave the game away. We should have won that game. Nobody is happy or excited. There are no moral victories in football.”
Then he added: “We’re looking forward to seeing them down the road and also building on what we’ve done.”
Forte’s take was echoed around a disappointed but not demoralized locker room after the Jets went toe-to-toe with Tom Brady and proved they’re not the doormat many expected when there was talk of tanking the season in order to gain a top pick for a franchise quarterback. Put all that on hold please. At 3-3, the Jets proved they have to be taken seriously after making the Patriots sweat out four quarters.
Look, the Jets still have plenty of flaws. The defense failed to produce a sack and the offense floundered for much of the second half. But the Jets owned most of the first half, taking an early 14-0 lead that excited the home crowd and had to make everyone in the New England camp nervous.
“Getting behind 14-0 down here is not really where you want to be,” New England coach Bill Belichick said.
But Brady is Brady and the Patriots have all that jewelry. So no one should have been surprised it was 14-14 at halftime after the Patriots turned a Josh McCown interception into a touchdown pass from Brady to Rob Gronkowski with 9 seconds left in the second quarter.
“Stuff like that we can’t do if we’re trying to win a football game,” wide receiver Jermaine Kearse said.
And when the Patriots opened the third quarter with an eightplay, 75-yard drive that ended with another Brady to Gronkowski touchdown, you figured the second-half rout was on.
“They’re well-coached and they’re the Super Bowl champs,” safety Jamal Adams said. “And they’ve got No. 12, who figures out a lot of things. He took advantage and made some plays.” But the Jets stayed competitive even after a replay review took a potential touchdown away from tight end Austin Seferian-Jenkins with 8:31 left in the game. That call will be discussed at length this week, but the Jets did enough good things to believe they’re headed in the right direction. “We’re going to build off this game,” defensive back Buster Skrine said. “We lost the game, but nobody’s hanging their head. We played hard. We have a confident team this year, and we have good chemistry. We stuck together the whole game despite what was going on in the second half. I feel like we grew as a team.”
A three-game winning streak ended, but the Jets believe they proved they can play with the best.
“I knew coming in that we were going to battle,” cornerback Morris Claiborne said. “I knew we were going to fight for every blade of grass. It just hurts we didn’t get the win we fought so hard to get. We had expectations of shocking the world today. But I think people understand we’re going to fight you. You just can’t scratch us off the schedule.”
It took everything the Patriots had and a little help from the refs for Brady to get his record 187th win. Good for him. The Jets now will focus on getting win No. 4 in Miami next week.
“We flat out should have won this game,” linebacker Darron Lee said. “We didn’t, but no one is down. This isn’t going to knock us off our tracks. We’re going to keep fighting and keep pushing.”
No more moral victories for these Jets.