OVER and over, week after week, this is what Brett Favre has been telling New York:
“I didn’t come here to lose.”
He sure didn’t come here to lose to the Ryan Fitzpatrick Bengals.
Favre has won over his Jets teammates with his down-to-earth ways, his practical jokes, the joy with which he plays, and his rocket right arm.
Favre turned 39 Friday. If his teammates didn’t help him blow out the candles, the least they can do is treat him to a belated birthday present by blowing out the Bengals. And they can remind the old gunslinger that it is not too late in the game for him to have his cake and eat it, too.
You do not let an 0-5 team with a backup quarterback out of Harvard come into your building and wreck your season, not even if you are the Jets.
You jump on Fitzpatrick and the Bengals the second they step off the bus and keep the pedal to the metal before they can so much as see the tiniest glimmer of hope.
You bury them.
It is called killer instinct, and this time, if you storm out to a 34-0 lead, you make sure it doesn’t somehow suddenly become 34-21, the way it did against Kurt Warner.
The 2-2 Jets should never again have to ask Favre to throw six touchdown passes to lift them to the 56-35 victory over the Cardinals. He would have just as happy a belated birthday, in fact, if Thomas Jones and Leon Washington were to make life easier on him and rush for 150 yards or so on the ground. He also would be happy if Gang Green could suffocate Chris Perry and Cedric Benson with a heavy diet of Kris Jenkins and David Harris, then rattle Fitzpatrick with an adrenaline rush of Calvin Pace and Bryan Thomas.
Favre will never be as comfortable with this offense and these receivers as he was in Green Bay with that offense and those receivers, but that wasn’t an excuse a month ago for him and it isn’t an excuse now. If he can beat the Dolphins in Miami on a head-spinning Opening Day when he found himself barking out “same play” to startled teammates when no play came immediately to mind, he ought to be able to be Jet Favre coming out of the bye week against this opponent now.
But Favre and the Jets must be on guard.
“They really switched it up for us, and really made some adjustments that were uncharacteristic of what we’d seen on game film,” Giants right tackle Kareem McKenzie said of the Bengals. “They really did a great job of throwing us off-kilter with a few things.”
Eli Manning & Co. figured it all out in a 26-23 overtime victory, so you better believe Favre will figure it out as well. That the Giants were life-and-death with the Carson Palmer Bengals was a surprise, however it would be much more of a surprise if the Jets are life-and-death against the Fitzpatrick Bengals.
Here’s what we know about Fitzpatrick, thanks to the Internet:
He was 2004 Ivy League Player of the Year, drafted by the Rams in the seventh round in 2005.
He scored a 38 on his Wonderlic test.
He led the two biggest comebacks in Harvard history by overcoming 21-0 deficits against Dartmouth and Brown.
“You may think this is an exaggeration, but I see a right-handed Steve Young,” his college coach, Tim Murphy, said a year ago. “Intelligence, toughness, mobility and athleticism.”
He came off the bench as a rookie to throw for 310 yards to beat the Texans in overtime with a 56-yard TD pass to Kevin Curtis.
“I was actually thinking about that [Dartmouth] game,” Fitzpatrick said that day. “The biggest thing when you’re in those situations is you need to get everyone around you fired up.”
He hadn’t thrown a pass since 2005 before throwing three interceptions and losing a fumble in a 20-12 loss to the Browns on Sept. 28.
“Coming in, I wanted to supply a spark to the team and try to get the offense going a little bit,” Fitzpatrick said afterward. “There were some plays that I made out there, and there were some plays that I wish I could have back.”
Happy birthday, Brett.