Pundabaya wrote:
Whoops, both top seeds fall down, go boom. I bet the the Packers fans watched the Pack O destroying Atlanta and thought 'thank fuck we let that Wrangler wearin', Mower ridin', interception throwin', penis textin' old son of a gun go'.
In other news: Wow. Didn't see that coming.
I'd like to say that was fun, but it really really wasn't. It was pretty much unrelenting agony from the first minute to the last. On the other hand, it was the single best Jet performance of the Rex Ryan era, and in the conversation (alongside the Divisional Round shellacking of the Colts a few years back) for the single best game I've ever seen the team play. So there's that.
At the beginning, I thought we'd rue David Harris not having the sense to angle his interception runback toward the sideline, and the subsequent missed FG. At the end, I thought we might rue Shonn Greene not having the sense to take a knee at the 1. Drives repeatedly stalling just outside FG range were a major worry. But other than that they barely put a foot wrong. Awesome, awesome stuff. For the second week in a row Rex Ryan resisted the urge to blitz, played coverage and let the outstanding secondary do its job against a receiving corps it didn't match up with particularly well. The way he managed the 4th quarter was perfect - realising the clock was the Jets' best defender so not trying to be a hero and not allowing the safeties to get sucked up to the line of scrimmage as the Patriots ran and passed short to grind up the field. Brian Schottenheimer only called one play all day that made me want to punch him in the cock, which might be partly due to the fact that Brad Smith was injured but I'll take what I can get. Sanchez isn't a great quarterback by any means but he had two awesome throws and did a great job of giving his playmakers a chance to show their stuff - LDT's nous, Cotchery's nose for the first-down line and outstanding broken-field running, Braylon Edwards' size and strength and Holmes' amazing field awareness and body control.
That was a good old-fashioned top-to-bottom arse-kicking and no matter what happens now (which for the record will probably be Pittsburgh winning the Soup Bowl followed by this Jets team being broken up by age and free agency) that game has pretty much put me all-in on Rex Ryan. Before last week I suspected that he was just an overrated blowhard who couldn't get away from that bombs-away defensive style that was always going to get sussed out by quality offences. Turns out he's a blowhard who can actually coach. I'll take that.
In summary then: fuck you, Wes Welker.