Sunday, January 1, 2012

Week 17-A Little Help

As soon as the gun sounded on the Jets 29-14 loss to the Giants last Sunday, the speculation began as to how Woody Johnson would react to the latest disappointment involving his franchise. In the past, Johnson has reacted to poor performances before by picking a sacrificial lamb, whether it's Paul Hackett or Eric Mangini, and jettisoning that person from Florham Park. Conventional wisdom dictates that this year it will be Brian Schottenheimer, the embattled offensive coordinator who is every Jets fan's favorite whipping boy. Schottenhemier's offenses have been positively mediocre every season he's been with the club; the Jets offense have never finished in the top 10 in the NFL in offense during any season of his tenure. The Jets offense has regressed to the point where they have only had 2 plays of longer than 40 yards during the entire 2011 season.

Of course, there are plenty of us who feel that there's enough blame to go around. Mark Sanchez and his 59-throw checkdown party at MetLife Stadium opened enough eyes to the fact that he still does not appear to be the guy to direct and NFL-caliber offense. Our receiving corps lacks quickness, squeezing the windows through which Sanchez must fit the football ever smaller and smaller. Our offensive line has two guys going to the Pro Bowl, which speaks volumes about Wayne Hunter and Matt Slauson (and perhaps even Brandon Moore), since they have largely failed to establish the line of scrimmage all season long.

The game is to start in about 30 minutes, so I'm making this short. The Jets need plenty of help to get into the playoffs today. At 1 pm, they need to beat Miami, and they need Houston to beat Tennessee. At 4 pm, they need Baltimore to beat Cincinnati, and they need either Kansas City to beat Denver, or San Diego to beat Oakland. There convoluted formulas are far-fetched; at this point, I would settle for a Jets win, and that may be the hardest achievement in these scenarios. Miami has played solid football over the last half of the season.

After this one is over, I will have a larger postmortem on 2011 and look forward to the postseason for the rest of the league. It would be fantastic to get in the postseason in 2011, simply because I don't believe any of the potential #6 seeds are afraid of traveling to Houston to face the Texans during Wild Card weekend. Houston is playing a third string QB and has lost 2 straight. As the Jets have shown over the past 2 seasons, all you really need to do is get in to the postseason.

Once you're in, anything can happen.

Kickoff from Miami is at 1 pm today.

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