The Jets made this bed. They know they can’t afford to sleep in it anymore.
“We feel like we need to make our run for the playoffs and that was our goal coming into the season,” James Farrior was saying yesterday afternoon, “and we know it’s do-or-die right now.”
Do tomorrow against the Dolphins and keep your AFC East title hopes alive. Do not do and maybe die.
“I think we had a great week of practice,” Vinny Testaverde was saying yesterday afternoon. “I think it was better than most weeks. We looked much more sharp than we have. It’s always a long week after coming off a loss, but this week felt even longer after coming off of our third loss. We’re looking to bounce back and get things going again.”
The Big Game has arrived. It is The Biggest Game the Al Groh Jets have played.
“It’s Crunch Time now,” Marcus Coleman said. “It’s Money Time now. It’s getting to that point where everything’s gonna be getting tough and everybody in our division starts playing each other one week and then next week and knocking each other off. If we want to be around in January, we gotta start winning.”
Now.
Coleman was asked what sense he has gotten about where this Jet team is.
“I think we’re ready definitely; I know we’re ready,” he said. “We’re just gonna go down there and play our game, and that’s it. We’re not gonna try and make anything hard on ourselves and just try to come out of the tunnel and be ready to play from the jump.”
The Dolphins, who somehow let a 30-7 fourth-quarter lead turn into a 40-37 overtime defeat, can’t wait to avenge the greatest comeback in Jets’ franchise history. The Jets can’t wait to stop the bleeding. Something’s gotta give.
Coleman was asked if this will be one of those games where the Jets will have to more than match the Dolphins’ intensity. “Oh yeah, absolutely,” he said. “They might be (ticked) off at us, but they’re in a better position than we are, so we have to come out probably double, to be honest.”
Testaverde likes the state of the Jets’ psyche. “I don’t think we’re so much focused on what our mindset is,” Testaverde said. “We’re just focused on winning a football game. To me that says a lot in itself because we’re not focused on the wrong things. We’re focusing on the right things … not paying too much attention to what’s being said or written. We know what we have to do; I think we’re pretty focused on doing it, and we’re gonna go out and try and get it done.”
It is one thing to play to the 60th minute. It is quite another to play for 60 minutes. If the Jets start slow again, they won’t live to tell about it. There is an urgency to their sense of urgency. “We realize that we have to play better as a team early on,” Testaverde said. “In the same breath we’re not focusing on every snap in practice that we have to come out and do that. We just have to concentrate on getting our job done one play at a time. And in the end, that’ll result in coming out and having a better first half.”
Whether they come out in the no-huddle or not, or open in the spread, they must at some point feed Curtis Martin the ball. Impose their will that way, finally, if only to take the heat off Testaverde.
“We just gotta come out strong,” Kevin Mawae said. “We just gotta have something positive happen in the first quarter and we can’t wait ’til the fourth quarter … winning the toss would be nice, the offense get on the field, maybe we get something going … somebody’s gotta come up and make some big plays early in the game and we build off of that … the thing about that is it takes a collective effort, whether it’s offense or defense or even special teams come out there and light somebody up on the first play or get a great return or whatever. I mean, you feed off that on the sidelines, and we need that to happen early in the game.”
Groh had the Jets banging each other around pretty good in practice Wednesday and Thursday. “This week we went full pads and last week we didn’t,” Mawae said.
Is that good considering the nature of this opponent? “I don’t know; I mean, it’s the coach’s call. The players would rather not be in pads, but if the coach thinks that’s what it’s gonna take for us to get motivated and get our job done then that’s what we gotta do.”
Groh didn’t hesitate yesterday when asked what disturbed him the most in the first Miami game up until the fourth quarter. “Our lack of effectivesness on defense against their running game,” he said.
RB Lamar Smith (155 yards, 2 TDs) gashed the Jets in the Monday Night Miracle, and the Jets haven’t rushed the passer with John Abraham gone or stopped anyone on third down or gotten takeaways since. Smith was added to the injury report yesterday as probable with a hamstring injury.
“They were more physical upfront and he broke a lot of tackles and we missed a lot of tackles,” Coleman said. “We know what they run; it’s just a matter of stopping it.” How? “Get as many people around the ball as you can, and everybody come in and wrap up,” Coleman said.