BALTIMORE — As they trundled off the field and through the corridors of M&T Bank Stadium, the Jets could hear the animated voice of the Ravens’ radio announcer, Gerry Sandusky, as he took great delight in filling the listeners of WBAL radio with a sharp spasm of hope.
“And the Ravens improve to 5-6 on the season,” Sandusky crowed, etching a final stamp on this 19-3 Ravens victory, “and they are RIGHT … BACK … in the PLAYOFF … HUNT!”
And in their ears and in their hearts, one by one, man after man, the Jets had to have thought the same thing as they tore off their tape and pulled at their pads.
We’re 5-6, too.
So why does our season feel deader than disco?
“We have five one-week seasons left,” linebacker David Harris would say, his soft voice plainly audible from the other side of a thoroughly defeated locker room. “It’s still not over.”
Mathematically, he is right. And because the AFC has devolved into a muddled, muddied mess of mediocrity, he is also technically correct, because as we wake up this morning everyone seems to be 5-6 except for the Canton Bulldogs and the Frankford Yellow Jackets.
But we have officially entered a realm with the Jets that looks an awful lot like the one we thought might define their season from the very start. The Jets took an early 3-0 lead and then spent the remaining 3 ½ quarters looking, to put it kindly, non-competitive.
“We didn’t play Jets football,” defensive end Mo Wilkerson said, but that was the troubling part: that was exactly what they played, at least by the standard they’ve set the past two weeks, by the way they’ve looked in losing three of their last four games, all on the road, by an average of 26 points.
They were one of the NFL’s feel-good stories through nine games and five wins, enjoying a lot of outrageous good fortune along the way, sprinkling in just enough resilience that they were able to look themselves in the mirror and not believe the whole season was exclusively the result of a winning lottery ticket.
Now?
Now the rookie quarterback has taken a couple of extra-large steps backward, such a turnover machine that he was officially charged with a fumble on a ball he never even touched, when a snap accidentally (we assume) hit wide receiver Greg Salas as he was running in motion.
“I have to be better,” Geno Smith said, for the 824th time this season, proving that accountability, while a splendid trait, isn’t nearly as useful to a team as adequate quarterback play would be.
And the defense, which has had its moments this year, had a few other kinds of moments Sunday, stuffing the run to satisfaction (though against these Ravens this year, that’s hardly worthy of a medal) but yielding another batch of big plays, highlighted by the 66-yard scoring hookup from Joe Flacco to Jacoby Jones that ended the game’s lingering charade of competitiveness. Jones caught the ball in the middle of three Jets, allowing one of them, Ed Reed, to have his official Jets indoctrination.
Rex Ryan called that one “A Ripley’s Believe-it-or-Not.”
Believe it. The Jets, as it turns out, and with apologies to Dennis Green, may well be exactly what we thought they were. There is a growing sense that the rest of this season looks like it might be a macrocosm of this game: just enough hope to maintain your interest, not nearly enough firepower, and basic football skill, to make anything of it.
“We have to be smart and we have to be honest with ourselves,” guard Willie Colon said. “What are we doing wrong? And why are we doing wrong? We have to figure that out, and we have to do it in a hurry.”
He’s right about four of those five things. But maybe it’s best that the Jets try to go back to fooling themselves. Not so long ago they were 5-4 and actually getting weary of all the questions about their worthiness as a playoff contender.
That would be an awfully good problem to have again.