I waited a couple of days before posting this to let my brain clear of the disappointment of the loss. It's too easy to be all fogged up in the immediate aftermath and thus not able to see the big picture. The Jets chances on Sunday were destroyed by 3 crucial events, all of them important but only 1 of them correctable during the game. The first game-altering event was the injury to Donald Strickland near the end of the first quarter. Peyton Manning to that point was 3 for 5 for 63 yards, including the 28 yard pass on which Strickland got injured. He had been sacked twice however for -17 yards and so on 7 overall pass attempts the Colts had a net of 46 yards at that point and had been largely shut down. The Strickland injury did two things to the Jets defense - it stopped most of the edge blitzing, as Jim Leonhard was kept back more to help out in coverage, and it put Drew Coleman on the field for Peyton Manning to exploit. With few edge rushers to confuse the blocking assignments the gap blitzes up the middle were routinely picked up and Manning was really only pressured a few times after that moving forward and not sacked again. Colts receivers routinely came open against the zones the Jets were forced into after Strickland went down, a fact reinforced by the number of tackles the Jets safeties had to make on them after the reception. Leonhard wasn't blitzing because he was needed in the defensive backfield once the lack of coverage depth there was exposed. The second game-altering event was on the sidelines, a rare late season misfire by Rex Ryan and his staff. Once Strickland went down the odds on turning this into a low-scoring defensive battle were basically nil. The Jets fine defense was just too shorthanded against the best passer in recent memory to pull that off. The choices available weren't great however Ryan and company decided to play it safe moving forward and that took the wind out of the Jets sails at the moment that they most needed a strong breeze instead. This is just an opinion, but I think Drew Coleman's job on Sunday should have been to blitz from all angles on the majority of his snaps. His coverage skills didn't warrant putting him back on defense against a precision passer. The Jets really should have been pressing more than they were the entire second half, playing it safe wasn't going to win anything. The other misfire from Ryan was in shutting everything down after the Jets got the ball with 1:13 left in the half after Manning's quick strike to cut their lead to 4. This is the AFC Championship game, if you want to win it you have to pull out all the stops and go for it. The Jets should have been looking for a FG at the end of the half to get back to a 7 point lead. Shutting it down sent the wrong message to the defense, which already knew it was in trouble after the Colt's 2 minute offense shredded them, and also allowed the crowd to go into halftime on a high note and stay confident and LOUD. The third game-altering event, which was the coup de grace after which the Jets could not possibly win the game was the Shonn Greene injury. The Jets without a dominant rushing attack did not even belong on the same field as the Colts. Once Greene went down it was all over except for the details of the loss. The game itself was very entertaining to watch and I have no problem with the result, because once the Jets started to thin out they just didn't have the talent to compete on the field. That's not getting beat, it's getting worn down by attrition and that's just football, that's all it is.
I totally sign off on this post. The further we got into the playoffs, I kept looking at the roster and thinking to myself, 'They're getting that far with THIS?' 2 players on the field with casts on their hands, the loss of Kris Jenkins, the loss of Leon Washington, then the eventual loss of Greene in the second quarter, the loss of Strickland, Thomas Jones getting uncharacteristically banged up at the end of the season... that is a lot to overcome. And when you are thin on defense, you will lose to an offense like Indy has, no matter the ways Rex can disguise it, it then becomes too much to overcome, to play without your strengths. The Jets' run became unlikely when Strickland went down and Rex stopped attacking the LOS as much or as well, and then it died completely when Greene left the game.
Agree 100%..... BUT WHAT PISSES ME OFF..... And yeah, I have to sit here and swallow it... But, every freaking show I watch talks about how Manning and Co "Figured Out the Jets" Fine - Manning is one of the best ever and deserves all the credit in the world... And yeah, as a Jet or Jet fans I'm sure it could be considered "Crying" at this point.. BUT, shouldn't REAL ANALYSIS OF THE GAME point out the facts that this was no longer the #1 Defense of the Jets.... I keep hearing how Indy made adjustements and shut down the run..HELLOOOOOO!!!!! The #1 RB was OUT and TJ has had a knee injury for weeks.... I haven't read or seen on NFL Network where 1 "Expert" points out THESE FACTS... Jets were without Bart Scott, Without Strickland, Lowery was hobbled, Ellis had a Club and Leonard had a cast.... The Jets ran out of DB's THAT IS THE ANALYSIS OF THE GAME... Sure, it would have takent a miracle for the Jets - But, the 1st half looked good and I damn sure would love to have seen a result with all those guys playing. It's as if Peyton Manning went down and everyone talked about how the Jets defense figured out the Indy Offense..... It's like AROD had a broken arm and continued to play and people went off about how he no longer has the power to hit home runs anymore. DRIVES ME NUTZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
True, but unlike Fraudcesa crediting our wins to other teams' misses, I didn't think they were 'killer' points. Not like driving down to the 5 yard line and coming away with nothing. The 52-yarder was gonna be tough....Feeley really mis-hit the 44 yarder (it hooked right bigtime; thought it was blown that way, but he knuckle-hit it.). The Strickland and 2-minute scores were huge. Also don't forget injured Bart Scott being 2 feet on the field running off....12th man penalty...kept drive alive for a FG....easy 3 points given to them (something Fraudcesa didn't mention also yesterday but ragged the Jets for weeks when we got the benefit of a penalty far from the play of action).
the commentators said that rex said that this was the best team the jets have had on the field all season... yea right
That hit on Sanchez.... Man, if that was Tom Brady..... Sheesh!!! Maybe one day Sanchize gets Brady calls.
Unlike Regular Season losses, these losses tend to stick in your memory a looong time. I still remember the '98 game like it was yesterday. '82 was a long time ago but I remember #77 AJ Duhe terrorizing Richard Todd and the Jets high powered Offense being helpless in the mosh pit that was the Orange Bowl. What will haunt me most about this game are the breaks that didn't go our way (injuries, fumbles that weren't recovered) plus the sheer perfection of Peyton Manning in the 2nd half. Jets just weren't quite good enough to overcome these things.
Great post Bradway and I agree on all points. As the injuries mounted I could feel it slipping away. Good game. Tough Loss. Bright future. Sanchez looked very good and got a shit ton of playoff experince. .... Is it August yet? I can't wait!
Good post, most of the football nuts I have talked to ( and they are NOT all Jets fans) said up to 1/2 time, it looked like we would were going to pull this off. They were shocked how we "fell apart" or "manning figured us out".I tried to explain how we lost certain key defensive guys and later we lost Shonn, and most of them said, oh, we didnt hear about that. I dont use it as an excuse, just these were contributing factors to our failure to stay in the game. Besides the fact that Manning is one of the best QB's of our time and we needed a near perfect execution by our defense to pull this off. We get a couple of key pieces on defense this off season, and we will have a much larger margin of error to work with.
Excellent post, Br4dw4y. For the Jets to have beaten the Colts, they'd have needed to be near-perfect in executing their game-plan, like they were against San Diego. Injuries and a few ill-timed penalties (like the Bart Scott 12th man penalty) killed our cause. Plus, there is some truth in the "Peyton figured the Jets out" line of thinking. The man is an absolute machine. Again, between Peyton, Tom Moore, and Howard Mudd, the Jets would have to be almost mistake-free for 60 minutes. That's a tall order (too tall, as it turned out). Rookie QB, rookie HC, no Jenkins, no Leon....it's a testament to this team's heart and will-power that they were able to get as far as they did. I'm certainly disappointed, but not in the same soul-crushing way that I was for past defeats.
Good post Br4dw4y. When Shonn Greene left the field my friends and I said, "If he doesn't come back on to the field, we're done." And it was so. Strickland loss was big too. I gotta say, 'til today, I feel comfortable going into the half with the lead knowing we were getting the ball back. I can totally understand your point tho, but I just felt comfortable with how Ryan called that.
Yet every bozo in Jets nation was trying to convince the rest of us that the Jets beat a legitimate Colts team in week 16? "COME ON, MAN!!" what comes around goes around.
Good take. I agree the media has downplayed the injury factor, and how the adjustments Rex made after Strickland got hurt didn't work. Having said that, Manning was incredible. Even when his recievers were covered he made perfect passes and his young WR's made a lot of amazing catches. The Colts are not a great football team without Manning. They are pretty average. The reason the Colts beat the Jets can be summed up one way: Manning. Next year we need to get a home game in the playoffs. A bye would be nice too. We won 2 on the road, including a west coast game, not an easy thing to do. Just looking at what I typed.... how far has Rex taken this team in just one year? And how good has Tanny done in the draft? SOJ is dead.
No Jet fan said that. What we said was don't belittle our achievement in winning any game on the road and playing their 1st string for 2 1/2 quarters. Big difference.
note I said every "bozo" in Jet Nation - I didn't call every Jet fan a bozo - but there were some of them. I listened to Francessa one afternoon last week, it was caller after caller trying to convince him that the Jets beat a legitimate Colts team that day.
Hey- With those guys healthy (as they WERE), Playing AT Home... Plus the fact that you can't take away that the Jets NEEDED the game and Indy did not... I personally don't think that week 16 game would have been the miracle Fatcessa and other make it out to be....
No they didn't. They said they deserved credit for winning the game and not getting blown out by Manning and the Colts when they played their 1st string. You don't think Manning was looking to get the Colts 30 points by midway through the 3rd Quarter and give Curtis Painter a 2-3 TD lead ? Interesting that you mention Fraudcesa......the guy went on and on about penalties being called 20 feet away from the point of action during the Bengals and Chargers games. "Oh, the Jets were lucky...that hold had nothing to do with the play." But when Bart Scott, who could barely walk, was 2 feet away from the sideline and got caught for a 12th man penalty leading to a continued drive that led to a FG, no mention that the Colts got a 3 point gift from the refs. He's a biased, bitter Giants fan who is so phony it's not even funny. Mushnick has nailed him for years. I wonder if Mr. Impartiality still has the Jets jacket he used to wear out at Hofstra when he did his radio show from there during the Bill Parcells Era.
Don't let this gloating Colts fan hijack the thread. I mean he's going to use Fatcessa to make some case about Jets fans? LOL....
