IT was a curious sight at the Meadowlands last night, just after 7 o’clock, as the final gun crackled in Giants Stadium and the Jets’ 17-7 win over the Dolphins officially passed into the public record.
On the field there were 106 football players, some of them wearing green, some of them wearing aqua, almost all of them looking remarkably fresh and energized. And in the stands were the remnants of a crowd of 77,918, almost all of them staggering out of the place, looking as if they’d just been through an Ultimate Fighting tournament.
“We’re a blue-collar team,” Jets quarterback Chad Pennington said. “That was Jets football.”
If that’s really Jets football, then they should hand out portable defibrillators with each game ticket, because there isn’t a single season-ticket holder who’s going to be able to make it through all 16 games. Blue collar? This is more like Code Blue. Football for folks with a death wish.
“We don’t look pretty all the time,” Herman Edwards said, but, then, neither does Ernest Borgnine. “You don’t have to apologize for not looking pretty if you win a football game.” Or an Oscar for “Marty.”
Yes, the Jets eased comfortably into their familiar old persecution complex, congratulating themselves on breaking into the win column for the first time in 2005 and tsk-tsking the expansive wave of doubters who’d seen them mail in their Week 1 thrashing in Kansas City.
“I’m sure we’ll hear that again before the season ends,” linebacker Jonathan Vilma said with a smile. “That’s just a way of life in New York.”
Actually, it’s way of life in Kankakee and Oshkosh and Medicine Hat and every other province whenever the hometown team looks like a collection of rank amateurs, the way the Jets did in Arrowhead Stadium eight days ago.
Was the talk of a looming 2-14 a little premature? Sure it was. That’s the way the NFL is now, which is hardly a secret. You can look like a gathering of Rich Kotite’s greatest hits one week and find yourself in a four-way tie for the division lead the next, which is where the Jets find themselves now.
So the sky didn’t collapse after all after the 27-7 drilling the Chiefs laid on the Jets last week that felt like 57-7. But it’s foolish to act as if it didn’t happen at all. And it’s especially unwise to look at what the Jets did yesterday and start checking out Northwest Airlines flight schedules to Detroit for late January just yet.
Pennington was effective, and he led two touchdown drives, and he threw the most beautiful pass of the young season, a delicate 20-yard out to Justin McCareins on third-and-12 early in the fourth quarter that extended what turned into the clinching scoring drive after the Dolphins closed to within a touchdown.
John Abraham, after spending most of the last 10 months co-starring with Anthony LaPaglia on “Without A Trace,” finally showed up elsewhere on the CBS schedule, stalking Gus Frerotte most of the afternoon, almost looking like the player his agent tells us he is. And Curtis Martin ran for 72 of the hardest yards he’s ever gained in his life, 2.3 of them at a time.
Look, there was plenty to like. No one’s asking the Jets to throw it back like an undersized . . . well, dolphin. But there wasn’t a soul among the masses at the Meadowlands who made it to the Turnpike last night thinking they had spent the past three hours examining a legit contender, either. Not yet. Not by a long shot.
“We’re early in the process,” Edwards said. “Very, very early.”
The rest of the AFC East did the Jets a solid yesterday, giving back the game the Jets spotted them last week. Good for the Jets. They get back to sea level. If they want to climb any higher, they’d better not be too impressed by what they accomplished yesterday.
Because nobody else was.