SIX DRIVE!
JETS’ PUSH TOWARD WINNING OUT STARTS WITH BATTLE VS. PANTHERS
SO THERE was Josh McCown breaking down practice on the day before the holiday that was supposed to be Tanksgiving for the Jets, but is a gift playoff race instead.
“If you got your back up against the wall,” one player quoted the journeyman quarterback as saying, “it’s time to come out fighting.”
There is so much to fight for all of a sudden. The football gods have decided to kneecap the AFC and lump pretenders and contenders together, and so here are the 4-6 Jets — one game behind the 5-5 Ravens and the sinking-like-astone 5-5 Bills, for the second wild-card spot in the AFC, and also a half-game behind the 5-6 Chargers — fists balled for Cam Newton and the dangerous Panthers on Sunday at MetLife Stadium. Shock and Claw. I asked McCown to detail his message to his team.
“When you find yourself with six games left, and your back’s against the wall ... if you can’t get your juices flowing now, nothing will.
“You’re kind of at that moment. And having been a player that’s been on the outside before, been out of the league, just one thing I mentioned to the guys is that you’ll go around different places, whether it’s pickup basketball games or whatever, trying to find this type of environment.
“We’re so competitive and you’re in that gotta-have-it moment.
“And so, here we are, we’re in it.
“We’ll be on the other side of this game one day going, ‘Man, I wish I was sitting there with six games to go with my back against the wall.’ Just how fun it would be to fight. “And so I think we’re here. “Let’s go do it. “Let’s go fight and see where we land.”
The Ravens finish with the Texans, Lions, Steelers Browns, Colts and Bengals. The Jets finish with the Panthers, Chiefs, Broncos, Saints, Chargers and Patriots. A 4-2 finish would get the Jets to 8-8. They might need a 5-1 finish.
“If we win this weekend, and win all the way throughout, we’re sitting at 10-6,” Steve McLendon said.
It was suggested that is not realistic. “Why isn’t it realistic?” McClendon said. “Can it not be done, or can it be done? Anything is possible.
“I understand that everybody looks at us as the New York Jets and try to put us as the underdogs. That’s what we like! That’s what we like. And quite frankly, for me? Any time my back is against the wall, man, I want to come out fighting.”
It is a six- round fight. But a one-round fight first.
“I’m not looking big picture,” Austin Seferian-Jenkins said.
The Jets defense is looking to play big against big Cam Newton.
“You’re going to have to put your body on him to take him down,” McLendon said. “And I don’t look at nobody as no Superman. I don’t look at anybody as no superhero. That’s not me. I feel like he wakes up just like I do. He puts his pads on just like I do. He’s a man just like I’m a man. And, he has to play this game for 60 minutes, just like I do.”
Now, 4-6 is better than 0-10, which more than a few were projecting, but it hardly qualifies as shock the world.
“There was always an expectation to be in the playoff hunt, to be a playoff team, to win a bunch of games,” McCown said, “and we’ve never wavered from Day 1. There was a narrative outside of us that suggested a different thing, but within, we were always thinking that. So now, when you find yourself at 4-6, we’re not like heartbroken to where we can’t move on, but we’re disappointed. We thought we should be better. But at the same time, we’re sitting here in the thick of a playoff hunt, and ready to take advantage of the next six weeks.
“But yeah, I mean, shoot, we know, I think we all believe we could be better.”
They better be better, better cut down on the penalties, better find that elusive killer instinct. The schedule demands it. McCown, asked if his team has another gear, said: “Yeah, I think we have to, we have to find it. If we’re going to get there, we have to find it.
“There’s absolutely another gear that we can play at, and we all believe that.”
Rocky wears green-and-white, and Rocky believes he has a puncher’s chance.