PITTSBURGH – They wouldn’t allow themselves to use their weariness as a crutch later on, and maybe that is the best thing they can take away from this aggravating day. The Jets’ defense has been heroic for much of the season. It looked terribly ordinary yesterday.
And knew it.
“No excuses,” Shaun Ellis said quietly, shaking his head slowly, the tone of his words providing more than enough testimony how deeply this 17-6 loss to the Steelers cut him and the rest of his defensive mates. “They made plays when they had to make the plays. We didn’t stop them. It’s as simple as that.”
It was obvious from the start that the defense was going to have to carry the day for the Jets. It was obvious Chad Pennington was a little off his game – except for those moments when he was way off his game. It was obvious Curtis Martin was going to have a hell of a time figuring out a Steelers defense that was keying on him all day.
“You’re going to have days when your offense just isn’t going to score a lot of points,” Jets safety Reggie Tongue said. “You just have to make sure as a defense that you’re doing all you can to keep your own guys in the game. Give them a chance, that’s all.”
For three quarters, the men who comprise the Jets’ defense did just that.
They suffocated Duce Staley, smothering the Steelers’ bread-and-butter running attack. They harassed Ben Roethlisberger, keeping the young Pittsburgh phenom out of the end zone. They surrendered three points through the game’s first 45 minutes, and even those weren’t their fault, since it was a Pennington interception that set the Steelers up for their ice-breaking field goal late in the first quarter.
They had absorbed all the slings and arrows thrown their way this season, heard the chants of “overrated,” listened to the cynics and the skeptics who had insisted they weren’t nearly as good as their statistics. This was the time to prove them wrong. Fifteen minutes from the end, the Jets were tangled with the Steelers 3-3, and the Jets were dying for their defense to make the kind of defining play that great defenses make.
They are still waiting.
Instead, the first four plays of the fourth quarter went thusly: Jerome Bettis up the middle for 12 yards. Bettis for four more. Bettis for three more. And then Bettis dancing parallel to the line of scrimmage, suckering everyone, waiting for tight end Jerame Tuman to sneak across the goal line, then flipping him the pass, ensuring that every member of the Jets traveling party will officially spend the next nine months with halfback option plays invading all their nightmares.
“Inexcusable,” Ellis called that play.
“They executed perfectly,” said Tongue, who vainly scrambled back to try and break it up. “You tip your cap to them.”
And then, after the Jets snuck back to 10-6, the backbreaker: a 46-yard pass from Roethlisberger to Lee Mays on third-and-four. And then Bettis, acting like he was 25 again, bulling through the heart of the Jets’ defense, again on third down, a 12-yard burst of thunder that ended the competitive portion of the game three minutes from the final gun.
Fourteen points in 15 minutes. After three straight weeks in which they had pitched second-half shutouts, after sneaking up on the rest of the NFL and posting eye-popping numbers and insisting none of it was a mirage, they allowed 14 points in 15 minutes, and that’s never going to get it done on the road in December. Not against a team like the Steelers. Not against anyone.
Herman Edwards was talking about his team as a whole early last night when he said, “We didn’t come here to play good against the Steelers. We came here to win a football game and we did not get it done.”
Those words were especially hard for the defense to hear. They came here to verify to the rest of the league that they are as good as their statistics. The rest of the league is still waiting for the proof.