Here are a few things that could happen that might enable the Jets to pull a spectacular upset over the Eagles Sunday afternoon at MetLife Stadium:
Personally, I wouldn’t bet on any of those things.
You know what is a real possibility?
If the Jets’ defense, which has looked in brief fits and starts and fleeting spasms to be as good as it believe it is, comes roaring out from the opening kickoff Sunday and finally does what it believes it can do: make us forget the ’85 Bears.
We’ve seen it in bursts. We’ve seen it in the red zone. We’ve only periodically seen it in third downs, and have seen it way too little in the first quarter of games. But we’ve seen enough to know this: The D can be awfully good when it’s clicking on all cylinders.
It can be awfully good when it needs to be good.
Now it needs to provide one unforgettable and unrelenting afternoon in the North Jersey gloaming, even though the brightest piece of the secondary, Sauce Gardner, will be unavailable due to illness. If that can happen, the Jets might have a puncher’s chance, maybe figure out how to win a 13-9 game.
It’s almost certainly their only chance.
“We know how good we can be because we know the kind of players we have on defense,” Quinnen Williams said this week. “This is going to be a challenge for us, but I think we’re the kind of unit that rises to these challenges and we’re ready for them.”
It was cornerback D.J. Reed who put it out there before the season: “Honestly, I think we can be historical, not just the best defense in the league, but I think we can be a historical defense like the ’85-86 Bears. I think we can be that dominant if we just put all the things together.”
Reed will not be active Sunday as he continues to be in concussion protocol, but those words are destined to have a long shelf life — either as a source of ridicule or a goal for the defense to achieve.
For now, for starters, the defense needs to avoid the big-chunk plays that ruined them against Dallas and New England, and put them in such a yawning early hole against Kansas City.
“Explosives are, tell the team if you get an explosive on offense, you’re basically getting points and if you give one up, you’re basically giving points,” head coach Robert Saleh said. “So, if we can eliminate those 100 percent, we’ll hit our stride defensively.”
Hurts is a problem. The Eagles’ receivers are problems. The offensive line, as good as any in football, is a huge problem. The Eagles didn’t go to the Super Bowl a year ago by winning a lottery. They haven’t built a 5-0 record this year by cashing a winning PowerBall ticket. We know how good they are. We have seen how good they are.
Now we need to see something from the Jets.
The season doesn’t end with a loss. Two-and-four might be a hole, but it’s an escapable hole. But a win would be of such significance in so many ways.
For one, it would make up for what now looks like an egregiously bad loss, the 15-10 defeat the Patriots pinned on them three weeks ago. It would also bring them to 3-3, which no matter how you shook it out was something most Jets fans would’ve signed up for after this challenging six-game start to the season — even if Rodgers had been healthy.
Few believe that’s possible. The defense has to believe it is possible. Because if it is indeed possible, it will be the defense that’ll have made it so.