Lucky win only postpones misery for Jets fans
December 15
Newsday columnist Wallace Matthews
"Fasten your seat belts, Jets fans. Stow your tray tables in the up and locked position and be sure your seat back is straight up.
Now, bend forward, put your head between your knees and kiss your Super Bowl dreams goodbye, because the crash is coming.
Once again, it's December and the Jets have you right where they want you - hopeful, excited even - and poised to have your guts kicked out.
They beat the Buffalo Bills in dramatic fashion yesterday, 31-27, to keep hope alive that this will turn out to be a special season in Jets history.
Afterward, they twisted the story to fit their needs, wrung it out and spun it so hard that they practically turned Giants Stadium into one enormous washing machine, the better to launder the dirty details of what really happened down on the field a few minutes earlier.
Eric Mangini called it "finding a way to win a game, however it comes."
Brett Favre said, "We needed some kind of a break, some way, somehow."
Defensive end Shaun Ellis, who scored a most improbable touchdown for the Jets at a most inopportune time for the Bills, acted as if he and his teammates knew it was going to happen all along.
Call it confidence or call it self-delusion, but call it what it was. Yesterday, the Jets did not find a way to win; the Bills manufactured a way to lose. The Jets did not just get "a break," they got a series of potentially game-turning breaks in the second half alone, and couldn't capitalize on any of them until a fortuitous confluence of boneheaded play-calling by the Bills, thick-fingered execution by J.P. Losman and timely location by Ellis resulted in a game-saving and perhaps season-salvaging touchdown.
The final result obscured another week of porous run defense, shoddy tackling and inconsistent offense by the Jets, who no longer seem to be getting better but merely getting by.
Afterward, Favre tried to portray the game-deciding play as "who knows, one of those things that catapult us to something great," as if it were David Tyree catching a prayer off the top of his helmet against the 18-0 New England Patriots on Super Bowl Sunday.
In fact, it was the result of the inexplicable decision of Bills coach Dick Jauron to have Losman roll out and throw the ball when all he really needed to do was hand it to Marshawn Lynch or Fred Jackson and watch them take a few Jets defenders for another ride."
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