Keidel: Hard Knocked
By Jason Keidel
The New York Jets were developing all the bona fides of a bust. They are the sixth team to appear on "Hard Knocks," while the first five didn't make the Super Bowl, the Jets' desired (if not expected) destination this season.
Rex Ryan, the loquacious coach, waddled his way up and down the sideline, spouting the team's brilliance while they kept losing games, with an Iversonian (practice!) penchant for F-Bombs.
RELATED: Sanchez Outduels Brady As Jets Rout Pats
Then the team fails to sign its star player, Darrelle Revis, after everyone from the owner to the janitor announced that the club would pay him his proper value. Then Revis signs a few days before their opener. Then they lose their opener. Then they allegedly accost a female reporter. Then Randy Moss scores a picturesque touchdown with a hobbled Revis clutching his hamstring. Then Tom Brady, as he often does, shreds the Jets for much of the first half yesterday.
Then, of course, the Jets stomp the Patriots the rest of the way and cruise to a 28-14 victory. Fickle are the fates of pro football teams. This is why we shouldn't bet on games.
And for those of you who went from jumping off the bridge to jumping back onto the bandwagon, we still don't know what the Jets are. We can only hope they stop telling us and start showing us. Yesterday's win can be a leap in that direction.
Bombast is the luxury of folks who have accomplished something. Joe Namath guaranteed a Super Bowl win only after he knew he'd play in the game. Ryan's Jets are full of verbal false starts. Maybe yesterday's unexpected win will chill them out, alerting them that the game is won with their limbs, not their tongues.
Namath, who voiced very rational concerns about the Jets, has the ancestral high ground as the only quarterback to win the Super Bowl for a team that actually played in New York. He is worried about the offensive line and the wide receivers, two team components he knows far better than we do.
Current Jets were irked by Namath's diagnoses, extending their maddening paradox of arrogance and sensitivity. The Jets have been so worried about their appearance that they forgot about their performance…until yesterday.
Brady, the avatar of the Patriots' dominance over the Jets for the last decade, lost his mojo at halftime – after Revis left the game, no less – while Mark Sanchez mysteriously found his. Through some voodoo, the two quarterbacks swapped roles in the second half and Sanchez threw the ball as though his were the hand with three rings on it.
And yesterday's win italicizes the axiom that the NFL is indeed a quarterback's league. Few men short of Freud can explain how Sanchez went from scared to stud in six days. Perhaps he merely reflects the volatility of his age (23). Perhaps we forget that he was in high school five years ago, and that his first job out of college is playing quarterback in the media vortex of the world. Sanchez carries more than a football when he drops back; he is the vessel for New Yorkers who have waited 40 years for another title.
Perhaps Sanchez graduated yesterday. Perhaps we don't know. No, we surely don't.
Feel free to email me: Jakster1@mac.com
