The Postmortem

Damn...that was a tough one.

It's going to take a little while to get over Sunday at Heinz Field. Normally, I can bounce back pretty quickly after a loss, but I had managed to convince myself that we were going to win on Sunday prior to the kickoff. There are a lot of ways to lose a football game, and in 34 years of following this team, I've seen just about all of them.

Easily the most depressing way to lose is by allowing the other team to take the ball and ram it down your throat with the running game. We didn't defend the run too well the first time we visited Pittsburgh in 2010 and we were even worse during the first 30 minutes on Sunday. There were even several times over the course of the first half when the Jets were in the right defense and had Rashard Mendenhall cornered in the backfield only to whiff on him and allow a positive play. It was so uncharacteristic of our defense that I felt like I was watching a different team.

Since I try to be a glass half-full type of fan, the most important positive result of the game for the Jets was the play of Mark Sanchez. Sanchez can be frustrating to watch at times, but he is learning and developing very quickly and was the best player on the field for large portions of the AFC Championship. I don't think there's a Jets fan anywhere who didn't believe that if the defense had risen up and stopped the Steelers on their last possession, Sanchez would have went right down the field and won the game. I would have bet my life on it.

But, it wasn't to be. This is my fourth trip to a championship game as a fan and we're now 0-4. It's a bitter pill to swallow, but I truly feel that the best is yet to come for this franchise. The Jets loaded up for a run this season, and they are probably going to lose a few key contributors for 2011 (the owners and the NFLPA willing). It wouldn't surprise me if the Jets struggled to adjust next season, but I feel like within the next few seasons, we will reach the mountain top. We are very close.

Next for the Jets (once the labor situation has settled) is to determine who we're keeping and who we're letting go. The front office has to make a decision on Santonio Holmes, Braylon Edwards, Antonio Cromartie, David Harris, Jason Taylor, LaDainian Tomlinson, and Nick Folk, just to name a few. We still don't know what the cap is going to look like for 2011, but once it's established, Mike Tannenbaum will have his work cut out for him. We also have the 2011 draft to prepare for, and the Jets can't afford to draft poorly. It's too early to judge the class of 2010, but the first year results were not too promising.

Luckily for the Jets, Rex Ryan has done an excellent job turning the Jets into a destination location for free agents, which should serve us well into the future. The Jets will have holes to fill, as most teams do in the offseason. If we can continue to attract talent and draft wisely, with the core of players we have now...I'm ready to kickoff 2011 already!!!

So, keep your head up Jets fans. Perhaps our boys have learned their lesson and will win the AFC East in 2011, so the road to the Super Bowl won't involve 3 straight road games. Perhaps 2011 or 2012 will be the year we finally win a championship. I just hope you share my optimism for the future with this group of players and coaches.

September can't come soon enough.

Collapsapalooza

I was going to spend this column going off like a dental drill, but I decided against it in the end. The problem for me, and a lot of other long-time fans of the team, is that we've seen this movie many times before. Being a New York Jets fan often means being seduced and abandoned in December.

You won't find a lot of sympathy around the NFL. In the market where I reside the local fans are subjected to Carolina Panthers football, which makes the Jets look like the 70s Steelers. I had the great joy of witnessing last weeks abomination courtesy of some tickets from my friend Bob, and Atlanta made the Panthers look like a high-school team. Carolina can't win any matchups in their front seven, and their receivers are unable to separate and get open. It's hard to believe that they won a game this year.

Much like an NFL version of Scared Straight, watching the Panthers made me appreciate the Jets. At least there seems to be a foundation at key positions on the field that will allow the franchise to compete into the future provided that they have better drafts than they had in 2009. Young players like Nick Mangold, Darrelle Revis, D'Brickashaw Ferguson, and David Harris form the cornerstones of the foundation. You may notice that I've left Mark Sanchez out of this equation, simply because I still have no idea what the end product is going to look like with this kid.

To say I've been disappointed with the way that Mark Sanchez has reacted to the situations he's been placed in the last 2 weeks would be a vast understatement. Sanchez has been wildly inaccurate, which is usually followed by the same hang-dog look you would see on a 9-year old who strikes out with men on base in a Little League game. He has not delivered, but even worse, he looks defeated. Rex Ryan admitted during the week that he considered pulling Sanchez in the second half against Miami, and it's hard to blame him. In the Jets 4 losses, they've scored a total of 18 points. If you can't score, you can't win.

I'm not going to go into the gory details of the last few weeks. If you've been watching, I'm sure you're as frustrated by all of it as I am. Most NFL players are able to move on to the next week, even if the fans are looking for a larger meaning in every poor performance. The facts are that the Jets are 9-4, regardless of how they've gotten there. They are still in the position that if they win this week in Pittsburgh and get some help, they can qualify for the postseason by the end of the day.

Here's a stat you may see today...the Jets have never won a game in Pennsylvania. I believe we're 0-6 lifetime in Pittsburgh. The Steelers will be without Troy Polamalu, his injured ankle, and his luxurious hair. Ben Roethlisberger has been battling multiple injuries and his offensive line is patchwork at best. But, they still have a devastating defense that is able to force mistakes and limit scoring opportunities. This isn't exactly the defense that you get well against.

For the Jets to have a chance to win, they will have to run the football against a team that only allows about 60 yards a game on the ground. They will have to avoid mistakes and recognize that punting the ball and playing the field position game while trying to force mistakes may be their best opportunity to win.

Young fans of the Jets deride the Same Old Jets fans, the people who have witnessed the horrors of seasons past and seem to be waiting for the other shoe to drop, hedging their emotional bets to protect against the psychological damage of another unhappy ending. I don't consider myself a SOJ fan, but I feel their pain. It's hard to get up week after week when you know your team may not have what it takes to win it all, much less this Sunday's game. All it takes is one solid performance to have the whole fan base and the New York media singing a different tune on Monday morning.

Kickoff is 4:15 today at Heinz Field.