Week after week, game after game, interview after interview, the same pattern prevailed: optimism replaced by confidence replaced by defiance…
Replaced by depression.
Week after week, game after game, interview after interview, there would be so much talk early in the week about a football team finding itself, about a football team coming together, about a football team on the brink of doing special things.
Just wait, they said week after week, game after game, interview after interview.
You'll see.
Only what we saw with the 2013 Giants is exactly what we're starting to see with the 2014 Jets: When the spin cycle of negative energy kicks into overdrive, there's precious little you can do to reverse course. For the Giants, a tough 0-1 became a grisly 0-3 became a stunning 0-6.
The Jets' path did include a Week 1 win over the semi-professional Raiders, and offered cruel spasms of hope a week later in Green Bay, but last week's 31-0 whitewash at San Diego looked eerily similar to the non-competitive phone-ins the '13 Giants turned in at Carolina (38-0) and Kansas City (31-7) and against Denver (41-23).
And just as 0-1 became 0-6 in a heartbeat for those Giants, there is a rapidly-descending sense of inevitability that what was once 1-0 can become 1-6 within the next five days.
And here's the frightening part.
As bad as 0-6 was for the Giants, 1-6 will be a thousand times worse for the Jets. Part of the frustration of that 0-6 was the Giants could look around the NFC East and know, just know, that if they could only get that one carrot, get that first win, they weren't that far away. And they were right. They beat Minnesota in Week 7, won four in a row, and actually had a meaningful November game against Dallas.
The Jets?
If the Jets really do get to 1-6, they will be so deeply buried in an AFC East in which the other three teams are all at least at .500, it will be impossible to see daylight anywhere. And here's the other thing: Before the season, staring at the gauntlet those first seven games presented, there was always a sense if they could just stagger through at 3-4, things would open up for them to make a run.
Except, when you take a close look at what awaits the Jets after Week 7, you see this: home to Buffalo; at Kansas City; home to Pittsburgh; at Buffalo; home to Miami. Where was that easy stretch of games we were talking about? And if 1-0 can become 1-6 that fast, how quickly can 1-6 become 1-11?
OK. Deep breath. Exhale. That's your worst-case scenario. That's your Doomsday Plan. The Jets aren't 1-11 or even 1-6 — not yet, anyway. This is the NFL, after all. This is Any Given Sunday. This is still a team that was on the threshold of not only beating the Packers in Green Bay but blowing them out before … well, you know.
If you are the Jets, you have to believe you can shock the world Sunday, because if not, why would you even bother to show? If you are Rex Ryan, you have to believe that you can figure a way to flummox Peyton Manning — even if Manning enters wanting to settle not one but two scores, last year's mess in the MetLife Super Bowl and the way Ryan and the Jets rudely ended his Colts career four years ago — because if not, you might as well already pen your letter of resignation.
And if you are among the most fervent of the diehards … well, of course you will hold in your heart the possibility karma may be paying attention. After all, it was a mirror-image scheduling quirk in 2011 that ended the 2 ½-year Era of Good Feeling in Rexville. Then, it was a tough loss to the Patriots at home on a Sunday and a grisly loss at Tim Tebow's Broncos on a Thursday that catapulted the Jets from contenders to chaos, a dive they've yet to correct.
So if you're going to reverse that negative spin cycle? This is as good a time to do it. It's as good a time for you to believe you're finding yourself, coming together, on the brink of doing special things…
Even if nobody else does.
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