In the AFC, four teams have three losses, no teams have four losses, and five teams have five losses. Six of those nine teams will get to the playoffs. Three won’t.
The Jets are one of the five 7-5 teams. Maybe they’ll make it, maybe they won’t. Coach Rex Ryan has an observation to make, if they make it.
“If we get in, look out,” Ryan recently told Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News.
“Hey, we’re not in the playoffs yet. But if we get in the playoffs, they’re gonna be talking about four teams,” Ryan said. “I mean, if we get in, how can you not talk about us?”
They’ll definitely be talking about the Jets. In large part because Rex does so much talking. His talking to Lupica included more talking about Rex’s fixation on the Patriots.
“I feel we’re gonna play them again, and I’m excited about that,” Ryan said. “Even when we got our doors blown off, 45-3, last season, I wanted to play ’em again. I meant it then, I mean it now. We WANT to play them. No question we want to play them.”
Fine, but first Rex and company have to get into the playoffs. And that means winning at least three, if not all four, of a final stretch that includes games at Philadelphia and Miami and a “home” game against the team with which the Jets share a stadium. You know, the team other than the Patriots that Rex spends the most time agitating.
Consider Chapter 15 of his book, Play Like You Mean It. “I have news for you,” Ryan writes of the Giants. “We are the better team. We’re the big brother. People might say they are the big, bad Giants, but we are not the same old Jets. . . .
“To me, it seems clear that right now we are the better team and we are going to remain the better team for the next 10 years. Whether you like it or not, those are the facts, and that’s what going to happen. I know it’s going to happen because our style of football is different. We are going to take over the town whether the Giants like it or not, so those fans on the fence that like both teams are going to be Jets fans in the end. The truth is, if I am going to watch one game, I am going to see the Jets, without a doubt. We are better.”
Two weeks from today, Tom Coughlin won’t be reading to his team from the works of Clement Clarke Moore. Coughlin instead will be reciting from pages 187 through 196 of Rex’s book, and Coughlin won’t have to say much more to get his guys ready to keep the Jets from playing the Patriots again this season.