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Patriots Past

There's a team like the New York Jets almost every season in the NFL. A lightly regarded outfit thought to have marginal talent overachieves its way into the playoffs to the general wonderment of the football world.

More often than not, the team has a first-year coach. Almost invariably its formula for its unexpected victories is the rope-a-dope. Stay close, make a few big plays on both sides of the ball, and above all, don't make any errors.

Not screwing up will win a startling amount of football games no matter what else happens. It also happened to be a game plan uniquely suited to the peculiar skill set of Jets' quarterback Chad Pennington. The Jets took all their risks on defense, covering up weaknesses with blitzing in an attempt to force the other guys to commit major screw-ups.

The come the playoffs. They're the circus where one-trick ponies come to grief. Error avoidance is not enough against teams with the talent to erase their mistakes. Error avoidance becomes its own worst enemy when the format switches to one and done.

Simply put, error avoidance teams aren't built for or used to taking risks, and when a team falls behind in the playoffs, it's got to. Last season, the Bears were the club that rode this formula to the post-season. In the very first drive of their first and only playoff game, Steve Smith got behind Chicago's defense for an easy touchdown, and the Bears were history.

The very same thing happened yesterday. Like any team, the Patriots do not always put all their pieces together in the same game. But they possess all the pieces of a complete team, and can plan accordingly. Tom Brady can play indifferently for 50 minutes without killing New England (see the Lions game) as long as he perks up in the final 10. Corey Dillon can run for scores inside the 10-no Jet can. The Pats can hold an opponent down without a single blitz if need be. The Jets can't. And so on and so forth.

The Jets hung quite tough against the Pats for longer than I expected. Then they suffered the inevitable. Behind in the fourth quarter, they took risks for which they were unsuited and unprepared, turning them into three deadly blunders we'll call Vince Wolfork, Kevin Faulk, and Asante Samuel. New England 37-Jets 16.

There's no shame in suffering the inevitable. Eric Mangini taught the Jets their trick to perfection. What he and they need are a few more hosses instead of ponies.

posted by Michael Gee @ 8:45 AM