Shuffle the Deck

I had a whole bevy of Chargers related posts ready to go this week.

I was lining them up all in a row after I spent the entire first half of last night’s game angry muttering, “The Jets are the worst team in football”. Of course, I alternated that with, “The Chargers are a stupid team.”, but in the end I figured the Jets ability to suck would outweigh the Chargers ability to piss away a game.

Obviously, I was wrong.

• Let’s put a knife in the back of “momentum” shall we?  The point is so self evident, I certainly don’t need to expound upon it.  I will just give you these numbers:  NFL’s Final Four went a combined 4-9 over the final three weeks of the regular season, with two of those wins coming against teams not trying, and one against a team that had quit (Vikes over Giants).  The losers this weekend went 10-2 in their last three regular season games, plus three of them won an additional game last week.  Let’s not have this conversation ever again, ok?

• Restgate will get a final verdict after all.  If the Colts go to the Super Bowl, everyone (and I mean everyone) needs to admit that it was brilliant to allow the Jets new life.  One writer suggested the Colts might be regretting the decision to let the Jets live, intoning they would have been better off with Houston in the playoffs (who the Colts always beat).  Raise your hand if you would rather see the Texans than the Jets.  No, me neither.  Texans would have been a nightmare matchup.

• I’ve been saying the Jets were the best possible matchup in the playoffs for the Colts for weeks.  I’ve been saying the Jets are an awful team.  I saw nothing, NOTHING that changed my mind about that yesterday.  What I saw yesterday is a team that goaded their opponents into a bevy of stupid mistakes.  That’s a great strategy, but it won’t help against the Colts.  Indy isn’t going to head butt you.  They aren’t going to burn timeouts.  They aren’t going to make massive strategic gaffs.  They won’t come into the game with no sense of purpose.  I’m every bit as confident that Indy will crush the Jets as I was a month ago.  In my opinion, Baltimore and the Jets pose the easiest road to the Super Bowl any team has maybe ever faced in NFL history.

• I’ve been saying for 5 weeks that the Jets are an awful team, perhaps the worst in the playoffs.  I still believe that, though clearly the Bengals were worse.

• Talk about field goal luck.  Jets opponents are 0-5 in field goal attempts this postseason. To think that the Colts, Ravens, Cowboys and Saints all have questionable kickers, but the team that lost on blown kicks this weekend was the team with the best kicker of all.  Just shows to go, ya’.

• Norv Turner is an awful coach.  He has been for the last several years.  He was handed a deep and talented roster that perennially under-performs and commits stupid penalties, wastes the clock, and makes huge mistakes at all the wrong times.  He won a couple of fluky games against the Colts, so some people assumed he must be a good coach, but that game last night was a fireable offense.  The team was flat.  The game plan was a mess.  The penalties were inexcusable.  The strategy at the end was horrid.  My enduring memory of Turner will be the press conference he gave after the Hochuli game in Denver last year.  Instead of owning up to his team’s mistakes, he whined and cried about the bad call.  Last night, as the Jets were running the other way after a Rivers pick, Phil started bitching to the refs while the play was going on.  Pierre Garcon he ain’t.  Where do you think he learned to do that?  Norv.

• There was a way the Jets could have beaten the Chargers that would have terrified me.  That didn’t happen yesterday.  I saw a Jets team with a terrible offense that beat an overconfident mistake prone team coached by a ninny. The Chargers have been overrated for week because the media desperately wanted a story to juxtapose with the Colts.  They don’t field a good defense, and their offense was entirely built around the deep ball.  The Jets took that away nicely.  The Colts are better at most phases of the game than the Chargers (even running the ball). 

• Have you ever seen two young coaches know less about in game clock management than Rex Ryan and John Harbaugh?  Ryan was a mess yesterday too.  Oh, he gets credit for a lot of the other areas of the Jets success, but his failure to challenge the spot on fourth down and 1, but wasting a timeout anyway was embarrassing.  Ryan will get praise for the fourth down attempt, but why?  It was the obvious, no brainer call. I’m freaking sick of sports writers acting like doing anything on fourth down but punting is ‘gutsy’ or ‘bold’.  Failing to go for it there would have been ridiculous.  A punt would likely have netted only about 10-15 yards at best.  One extra play for the #1 pass offense or a 60-70% chance of a first down that ends the game?  Come on. 

• Are the Jets and Ravens the same team?  They sure seem like it.  FO numbers indicate the Ravens have a little better run D, and the Jets a better pass D and that the Ravens are better on offense at EVERYTHING than the Jets, but I assume that doesn’t take into account how clearly injured Flacco was at the end.  Get ready for more uber conservative Dungy ball.  Get ready for Miami.

• Reggie Wayne is not going to land on Revis Island.  Honestly, I thought Wayne made Revis look ordinary in the first matchup.  I can’t imagine any secondary playing better or more tightly than the Baltimore secondary did on Saturday night.  Blitz away, Jets.  I can’t wait.

• The best part of all of this is that Indy gets a dream matchup, but one that makes the players angry and ready for war rather than soft and overconfident. If you don’t think every man in that locker room wants another shot at the Jets, you are crazy.  I think this team is coming out savage on Sunday.

• I shed no tears about avoiding Scifres.  What a punter.

• One point from Saturday night I keep forgetting to make:  how comforting is it to watch your team play and see Cam Cameron on the other sideline running the offense? It warms my heart.

It’s the NFL and anything can happen. If the Colts come out and play a smarter game than the Chargers, however, I can’t see any result but a trip to Miami.