If We Had Free Balled Last Week

Look, you have to believe me. It’s very easy to write this in hindsight and the answer is no; if the Jets would have lost to the Colts I would not be writing this now. If we had Free Ballin’ last Monday I would have came out with my crazy predictions that turn out to be right, (Were going to forget that just a few weeks ago I said the Dolphins were going to win the AFC East, were going to remember last season when I said the Jets would beat the Patriots and Titans on back to back weeks.) and I would have said the Jets were going to defeat the Colts this week.

Now lets be honest, I would have used two arguments. The first one, and probably my strongest one would be the ridiculous, it’s what the Jets do argument. They rope us in and make us think they have a chance. They make us believe were going to the playoffs, then they stab us later. They have their playoff destiny in their own hands, they’ll win the hard game against the Colts we’ll be very happy, and then they will blow the opportunity the following week. That’s just what the Jets do. A few weeks ago before the Jets played Tampa, I said the Jets would beat Indy and lose to someone else that they shouldn’t. It’s what the Jets do; we’ve seen this movie before.

The other argument I would have used would have some football background to it. The Jets matchup very well with the Colts, they have the #1 defense in the league, they could stop Peyton Manning. I said this game was going to come down to what Mark Sanchez does. Would he win it for the Jets? Would he lose it for the Jets? Would he do just enough? The answer of course was C, he would do just enough. I would have made you think way back to week 4, when the Jets faced the very high powered Saints offense and held them to 10 points, Sanchez gave them the rest.

The truth is the Jets got very lucky against the Colts. The defense did a remarkable job against Manning, holding him to 15 points, but they were also bailed out by some timely drops by Dallas Clark, and some poor throws from Manning that made it look like his timing was off for some reason. The Jets defense kept the game very close the entire time, it was 9-3 at halftime; the Jets were very much in it. The problem was the Jets offense could not do anything until the Colts starters came out, which handed the Jets the game.

The Jets play next week for a chance to go the playoffs, which realistically is for resume purposes only. The team has a defense, but need a better passing game to have a shot at doing anything in the playoffs. The running game continues to be an enigma. It is one of the topped ranked rushing attacks in the league, but most weeks it seems that when they absolutely need yards on the ground, they can’t get them. Often times it’s the big runs at the end of the games that pad the stats and make the rushing yards look either big or respectable.

The playoffs would be a nice thing to have on the resume; it would show us what we would need to be work on. Sanchez will get better with experience. When Rex Ryan came to New York I said, “don’t write off the Jets just yet. He’ll bring that Ravens defense which has taken quarterbacks like Kyle Boller and Anthony Wright to the playoffs, it could take a rookie quarterback to the playoffs too.”

So if we had free balled last week I would have said the Jets would win in Indy. Now that you’re here, you would probably like to know what I would say if we were Free Ballin’ this week. So here it is, I don’t know!

There is nothing the Jets can do next Sunday night that would shock me. The final game at Giants Stadium, the fans will be going nuts. They could go out there and play like they did week 17 in 2002 against Green Bay (a 42-14 win) or the following week against Indy in the playoffs (a 41-0 win), an absolute blowout would come as no surprise to me. They could also go out there and play like the Giants did today, and get blown out of their own stadium. It all depends on which Jets team shows up next week, and frankly we’ve seen about 7 different Jets teams this year and any one of them can show up next week. Nothing they could do against Cincinnati will surprise me, and though I knew which Jets team would show up in Indy, I have no idea which Jets team will show up next week.