No, it didn’t look good. Not in the least. But get over it. It was a win, a road win that ended a two-game losing streak.
The Jets are 7-3 following their 10-7 struggle of a victory over the Browns on Sunday in Cleveland and they’re staring at two consecutive games against teams with losing records as they try to position themselves for a December playoff run.
The first game comes this Sunday in Arizona against the 4-6 Cardinals, who were waxed by the Panthers two days ago. After that is a home game against the Texans (4-6).
Sunday’s ugly win over the Browns set the Jets up for this crucial run.
“It was a game we needed to win,” Herman Edwards said yesterday. “It was a tough game on the road to win. My hat’s off to the team for hanging in there and getting us a win.”
Edwards said not only Sunday’s win over the Browns, but also many of the Jets’ wins this season have reminded him of the way the Buccaneers played and won games in Tampa when he was there. The Bucs were the masters of the ugly, low-scoring game, something the Jets have taken to.
“For five years I watched us play games like that in Tampa,” Edwards said. “That game [against the Browns] doesn’t bother me. When it’s 7-0 at the half, that doesn’t make me panic. I guess you build a tolerance for it when you see it for five years.
“We won a lot of games 6-3 and 9-7 [in Tampa]. You’ve got to win games like that. You take them. At the end of the day, they don’t draw a picture of how you won the game, they just put a win in there or a loss, a ‘W’ or an ‘L.’ They don’t paint a picture of the game. No one remembers the game.”
The Jets won in Cleveland despite having only five first downs in the first half, despite going 2-for-14 on third-down conversions, despite posting 11 net passing yards in the first half and just 78 for the game.
No matter. When it counted most, their offensive line decided it was tired of being bullied by a team that came into the game with a 3-6 record. Their running backs ran harder than they had all game. Their offensive coordinator decided to finally throw some short passes to the playmakers and let them make plays.
The Jets have taken the angst of these grueling games and turned it into an art form.
Take away their aberrant 41-14 rout of the Dolphins and the average margin of victory for the Jets’ other six wins is 5.7 points. On the other side of the coin, their three losses have come by 6, 5 and 3 points, an average margin of fewer than five points.
Even against so-called lesser opponents, the Jets have waited until the final moments to secure victory. They had to come back from a 14-0 deficit to the woeful 49ers and needed to rally to beat the Bills in the final moments. Then there was Sunday in Cleveland, where their season hung in the balance until the Jets finally scored their only TD of the game with 5:32 remaining.
“I’ll take winning any way you can get them,” Edwards said. “I don’t care. As long as we don’t have to cheat to win, it’s however you can get them, you win the game.”
Now the questions about the Jets are these: Have these close games toughened them, made them more mentally strong to take on the tougher opponents on the upcoming schedule? Or have the Jets struggled against these mediocre and poor teams because they’re not that good either?
The cumulative record of the six teams the Jets have beaten (including Miami twice) is 19-40. The 7-3 Chargers are the only team the Jets have defeated that currently has a winning record. The combined record of their six upcoming opponents is 37-23.
So soon, we’ll know for sure the answers to the above questions.
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Close calls
Herman Edwards, whether as assistant head coach with the Buccaneers (1996-2000) or as Jets head coach, doesn’t flinch when his teams are locked in low-scoring battles. Here’s his record in games in which both teams combined for 30 or fewer points (including playoffs):
Year Team W-L Pct.
1996 Tampa Bay 1-7 .125
1997 Tampa Bay 3-4 .429
1998 Tampa Bay 3-1 .750
1999 Tampa Bay 8-3 .727
2000 Tampa Bay 1-2 .333
2001 JETS 5-2 .714
2002 JETS 2-0 1.000
2003 JETS 2-3 .400
2004 JETS 3-1 .750
Totals 28-23 .549