CAN’T WAIT: THE HEIGHT OF THE 201O NY JETS By TJ Rosenthal-Jets Reporter-Football Reporters Online
As they wake up today on Super Bowl Sunday, many Gang Green loyalists will still fight the reality that Bart Scott’s post game “Can’t Wait” rant in Foxboro was as high as the Jets could fly in 2010.
Losing to the league’s number one defense, a franchise that owns six titles was one thing. Coming out as flat as they did in Pittsburgh, for a Jets team that fed off of it’s own swagger, was another. A Jet team that enjoyed proving their many new found enemies wrong all year long, while overcoming scandal after scandal.
Once they packed up their gear in Foxboro, the Jets essentially packed up their championship attitude along with it. Only to roll it back out onto the field, while down 24-3 in the third quarter at Heinz Field. When it was too late.
The unguarded thoughts that Scott shared after the upset of the Pats with ESPN reporter Sal Palantonio showed us what the playing speed on the field had to be, in order to dismantle hall of famers like Tom Brady. Or the great Peyton Manning for that matter, as the Jets had done the week before.
Paradoxically, the club’s first ten minutes at Heinz Field became the failed science experiment of what a nice and cooperative Rex Ryan team could look like. A meandering group that for much of the first half, couldn’t move the chains on offense as they missed tackles and mounted penalties on defense.
After the hated Patriots were gone, Rex Ryan addressed the AFC Championship game with an uncustomary approach: Kid gloves. He spoke publicly about the Steelers with respect. Kindness. All of the warm hearted personality traits that THIS Jets team decided to disregard a long time ago.
This 2010 Jets playoff run was not about making friends. It was about being disrespected. From analysts and opponents alike. If in fact, there weren’t as many naysayers as the Jets believed there were, they made them up in their collective mind. For inspiration. For an edge, that translated into a pair of playoff upsets.
Maybe Ryan WAS being honest the whole way this January, and NOT playing psychological tricks with his players through the media. When Ryan made the first two rounds “personal,” perhaps he truly meant it.
If so, then it is possible that in Ryan’s heart, he felt that the Steelers, unlike the Colts and Pats who had hurt the Jets over the past year when it counted, deserved admiration before condemnation. That a third straight road playoff game, this time against the league’s most physical defense, truly WAS the toughest part of what he termed “mission impossible:” A brutal road run to Dallas that included three of the league’s top teams for the past decade.
If Ryan’s honesty was blindly directing the course of events during the week leading up to each playoff tilt, well then a little acting on the part of Ryan and the Jets before the AFC Championship might have helped. A bit more of that familiar Ryan era Jets chatter. If nothing more than for the purpose of maintaining the same wave length the organization had been on since July. When all of the talk initiated by the Jets in Florham Park was about reaching the Super Bowl.
If a shift in the Jets personality leading up to the AFC Championship game was NOT the primary reason for the season ending slow start that day, then HOW DID Ryan’s loud and proud Jets, in the biggest game of their two year run, become so congenial right out of the gates? So pedestrian?
Some will argue that the primary cause for the early three score deficit was nothing more than a faulty Jets gameplan. One that failed to put eight in the box against Rashard Mendenhall in zero degree temperature, forcing the Steelers to throw from the onset. One that in addition, tried to establish the run on offense, too often in the early going, against the NFL’s top run stoppers.
As the Steelers prepare to kick things off in Dallas today, many who bleed Green and White will ponder “what happened” that day, to themselves. Torturing their Gang Green infected souls. Many wondering where the Jets would be today, had they been able to ride the “Can’t Wait” emotions that Bart Scott exemplified in Foxboro, all the way to Pittsburgh.
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