PITTSBURGH — Every week there are scores that flash along the bottom of our television screens that look like typos. Did the Bills really just take a four-touchdown lead on the Chiefs? Are the Cardinals really going to beat the Patriots?
Wait … the Dolphins? The Dolphins are winning a laugher? You can’t even believe what you see on HBO anymore, apparently.
This is something you can count on, though: The Jets coming to Pennsylvania — anywhere in Pennsylvania — and being ground into fertilizer. Doesn’t matter where, either. They’ve won exactly once in their history in Pittsburgh. They’ve never won in Philadelphia. When the NFL expands to Harrisburg, Altoona and Scranton, you’d be better off rooting for a bye week.
So say this about the Jets: They were reliable yesterday. They were outplayed on offense, outplayed on defense. Mike Tomlin played Rex Ryan like a Stradivarius. Ben Roethlisberger stepped out of the way of a few would-be Jets tacklers, barreled over a few others, picked apart a thin Jets secondary. And when Mark Sanchez had the ball, it looked like he was playing 11-on-15.
All in all, just another trip to the Keystone State for the Pennsylvania Pancakes. Fifteen trips now. Fourteen losses.
And a thousand unanswered questions.
“We’re better than this,” Mark Sanchez insisted, mostly because to believe otherwise is to wave a white flag exactly eight days into the season.
“What we saw out there today isn’t going to get it done,” Rex Ryan said. “And I believe this team is a team that knows what it has to do to get it done.”
It is a team whose reality lies somewhere between last week’s world-beaters, who manhandled the Bills (a win that looked especially good by about 4 o’clock yesterday after the Bills in turn manhandled the Chiefs) and the pathetic patsies who looked like they belonged anywhere but on the same field as the Steelers last night, depleted as they were.
It is, this morning, a 1-1 team in a league currently strewn with 1-1 teams, teams still searching for their souls and their identities. The Giants are 1-1, but probably feel a lot better than that this morning. The Pats, who tried to make the Jets’ day by botching a game with the Cardinals, are 1-1 and probably wondering how the league allows that.
It is a team bound for an early must-have game against the Dolphins in Miami, a game the Jets have to have if only because of the schedule that follows (49ers, Texans and Patriots in three of the following four weeks) but also because as good as they felt about themselves and their Week 1 performance, it was matched by a Week 2 that felt like a worst-of highlight reel from the preseason.
“It’s a game of momentum,” Tim Tebow said, “and when you lose it it’s hard to get it back.”
We should talk a moment about Tebow, about the Wildcat, about when and if the Jets actually expect to utilize him. Last week, his presence in the huddle actually inspired groans because Sanchez was playing so well. But yesterday, following a terrific 90-play drive on the first series, Sanchez had a Regression Game, and barely seemed on speaking terms with his wideouts.
If you aren’t going to mix things up then, when? Yet the Jets waited 34 minutes before unwrapping Tebow … and naturally the first time he touched the ball, he ripped off a 22-yard gain, easily the Jets’ most significant ground play of the afternoon. And then … poof. Gone.
Tebow refused to talk about playing time and Ryan offered an explanation which, loosely translated, read: “Ask Tony Sparano.” Maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference on a day the Jets were clearly outclassed across the game’s final 40 minutes or so. Or maybe it might have done what we’ve been told since day one it was all intended to do:
Light a spark. Provide energy. Give teams something to think about.
All things the Jets craved yesterday. All things they’ll need to discover before boarding the team charter for Miami. Florida — they’ve actually won some games in Florida. Palm trees. Stone crabs. Sandy beaches. Sandwiches that don’t come with fries and cole slaw between the bread.
The Pennsylvania portion of the program is over for another year. For their sake, they’d better bury the bitter memory, and quick, before their record starts to look like a typo.