Monday, January 17, 2011

1/17 Quickie: J-E-T-S, Jets! Jets! Jets!

Wow. That was one of the greatest NFL wins I have ever seen.

When you consider everything: That the Pats were the overwhelming favorite, playing at home and coming off a bye week, having stomped the Jets 45-3 just a few weeks ago, with a sick offense and with the Jets having talked themselves into a corner...

And the Jets just shut them down. They racked up that Pats offense and made them look like chumps -- it was as inspired of a defensive effort as I have ever seen, including the Giants doing just enough to stop the unbeaten Pats in the Super Bowl (or, say, the '85 Bears totally shutting down the Pats in Super Bowl XX.)

Most impressively -- and folks disagree with me, and that's totally fair -- the Jets talked as big of a game as I have seen a team talk, certainly in the playoffs against a juggernaut like the Pats were...

...and the Jets backed it up. Talk and lose, and you're a huge chump. Far more of a chump than had you not talked and lost.

But talk and WIN? You're far more of a badass than had you NOT talked and won.

The fact is that the Jets' talking wasn't just a reflection of their coach or some team mentality to yap; it was a concerted effort of psy-ops to get in the heads of the Pats. I honestly think it wouldn't work -- that no Belichick-coached team would fall for that. But the Pats did.

It wasn't just the talking alone, obviously. The Jets' schemes were superlative, but the talking didn't make those schemes less effective, and if it got the Jets themselves fired up -- rather than taking the Pats out of their game -- that's also a perfectly acceptable reason to do it.

These Jets may talk -- a lot -- but they are likable, not the least of which because they dispatched the Patriots, a team loathed everywhere but New England (or by displaced Pats fans). You can find the Jets annoying, but even more, you really didn't want to see the Pats win it all.

Check out the Quickish feed from last night to re-live one of the best performances in NFL Playoff history -- and thus NFL history, period.

*****

Bears throttle the Seahawks: OK, I think we can all get behind Bears-Packers at Soldier Field with the NFC's Super Bowl spot on the line.

Nets given permission by Nuggets to talk directly to Carmelo: If Mikael Prokhorov gets a chance to talk to Melo, he'll scare him into signing the extension agreeing to a trade.

(UPDATE: They might not have permission -- and even if they do, Carmelo seems REALLY disinterested in playing for them. Why are the Nets pushing if he's not into it? Even if they convince him today, he will have a count-down clock on until this new deal expires.)

Red sign Joey Votto to an extension at a very reasonable 3Y/$38M. That's a lot less than the Cardinals -- or, say, the Mets -- are going to pay for Albert Pujols.

Blake Griffin and the Clippers beat the Lakers: Coming off a win over the Heat, this would qualify as the best week in the history of the franchise.

The weekend's biggest winners: Rex Ryan, Bart Scott, Santonio Holmes, Aaron Rodgers, Jay Cutler, Big Ben.

-- D.S.

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