Kentucky Jet Posted November 15, 2008 Share Posted November 15, 2008 Favre in huddle a confidence booster for JetsBY ERIK BOLAND | erik.boland@newsday.com November 15, 2008 Brett Favre said he was nervous. "Nervous as heck," he added. The Jets, after winning the overtime coin toss Thursday night, faced a rabid Gillette Stadium crowd and a Patriots defense riding the momentum their offensive teammates had provided at the end of regulation. But Favre led a Jets regular-season version of "The Drive," a 14-play beauty that never gave the Patriots' offense a chance. It ended with Jay Feely's 34-yard field goal that gave the Jets a 34-31 victory and sole possession of first place in the AFC East. Favre finally had put his signature on a Jets win, doing so by exuding a confidence that he might not have felt but spread to his team nonetheless. "It is very special to have a guy like that step into your huddle," said receiver Jerricho Cotchery, who had five catches for 87 yards, including a 46-yarder in the second quarter that should be a catch-of-the-season candidate. "I didn't see any nervousness on his face; I saw a quiet confidence on his face, so to speak. When he stepped into the huddle, we knew we were going to be able to get it done because that's the way he's been this entire year." Thursday was Favre's 42nd career win after being tied or behind in the fourth quarter. No. 41 came Oct. 26 when he hit Laveranues Coles with a TD pass with one minute left in a 28-24 victory over Kansas City. But that was at home, against the struggling Chiefs. Not on the road against a team that had come back from 24-6 and 31-24 deficits, forcing overtime with an improbable 16-yard TD pass to Randy Moss with one second left in the fourth quarter. But once defensive captain Kerry Rhodes made his prescient "tails" call on the overtime coin flip, a sense of belief took over the Jets' sideline. "When you have Brett Favre coming into the huddle, it makes everybody else in the huddle step their games up," said Leon Washington, who electrified that same sideline with his 92-yard kickoff return for a TD in the second quarter. "We're fortunate to have a guy like that leading us." Favre, given how unstoppable the Patriots' offense had been in the second half, believed the Jets needed to score on their first possession of overtime. "I felt like it's either now or nothing; this is your one shot," Favre said. "They were rolling on offense, our defense was tired - it was all or nothing." Favre threw incomplete to Washington on his first pass attempt of the drive but went 5-for-5 thereafter, by far the biggest being his 16-yard strike to rookie tight end Dustin Keller on third-and-15 from the Jets' 15-yard line. "I think Brett just . . . he instills confidence in the group," Eric Mangini said. "There's a sense of ease when he has the ball. You feel he's going to get it to the right place." And right now for the Jets, that place is first. Sunday, Nov. 23 Jets at Tennessee 1 p.m. TV: Ch. 2 Radio: WEPN (1050), WABC (770), WRCN (103.9) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kentucky Jet Posted November 15, 2008 Author Share Posted November 15, 2008 Eric Mangini must trust Brett Favre and instincts even more Friday, November 14th 2008, 11:29 PM Sipkin/News Eric Mangini's approach has been conservative, but it also has been effective enough to propel the Jets into sole possession of first in the AFC East. We now know that that the first-place, retooled Jets own enough grit and high-priced talent to work some magic this season. On Thursday night in Foxborough, they overcame fickle momentum, hostile working conditions, the giant brain of Bill Belichick and even the self-doubts of their own coaching staff. This last obstacle was somewhat unexpected, and most troublesome. While Brett Favre flung fearlessly under pressure, it was hardly reassuring to watch Eric Mangini turn all jittery and cautious as the score tightened. Ironically, this 34-31 overtime victory over New England at Foxborough may well earn Mangini a contract extension in February. He deserves it, too. Mangini and offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer plotted an effective game plan for the first half, aided by the acrobatics of Jerricho Cotchery and Leon Washington. They out-schemed Belichick, tailoring their playbook to exactly whatever the battered Patriots ceded. Favre kept throwing bullets into the middle of the field, kept hitting Cotchery and Dustin Keller with line-drive passes exploiting botched or single coverage. Favre was hot. The Jets were rolling. And then, sadly, Mangini lost his nerve and turned this contest, literally, into a coin toss. We've seen this kind of shell game before, when a coach frets too much about a tough rival and loses his nerve along the way. Mangini didn't trust Favre to earn a clinching first down near the close of the fourth quarter. On third-and-2 at the two-minute warning, he ordered up an unimaginative plunge into the line - one yard and a cloud of dust. Then after the punt, Mangini chop-blocked his own defense. Admittedly, the Jets' secondary is arguably the team's Achilles heel. But Matt Cassel, a functional backup, seemed incapable of throwing the ball deep or long to the sidelines all game long. Yet that was exactly what the Jets guarded against so desperately in their prevent defense. They applied no quarterback pressure in the form of numbers up front. They generously offered Cassel acres of space in the middle of the field, his strength, yielding double-digit yardage at a time to the Pats' no-huddle offense. In one of the oddest decisions of all, the Jets backed off Randy Moss on the next-to-last play of regulation. While Mangini insisted this was still a double-team, it surely didn't appear that way on the replays. Cornerback Ty Law gave Moss a good six or seven yards off the line of scrimmage, and safety Kerry Rhodes didn't enter the picture until far too late. The play went for a tying touchdown, and potential defeat. Mangini Friday insisted he had made no tactical errors down the stretch. "They're not always going to be finished in textbook style," he said of these games. "With a minute nine left and no timeouts, they're fighting against yardage and they're fighting against time. The worst thing you can do is give up yardage and let them get out of bounds. ... The only open area was short and the middle of the field. ... It's about 16 seconds per play." The Patriots managed just fine with those 16-second spurts. This may seem like nitpicking in the afterglow of such a huge victory, but imagine if Belichick had the guts to go for the two-point conversion, or if the Jets had lost that coin flip. They might not have been celebrating a 7-3 record and the AFC East lead on that short flight home. Mangini has his big victory anyway, his fish handshake from Belichick. Hopefully, Mangini isn't as stubborn behind the scenes as he is on a teleconference call with reporters. Sometimes we forget Mangini is still a young trainee on the job, and that nobody becomes Belichick overnight - not even his prot Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kentucky Jet Posted November 15, 2008 Author Share Posted November 15, 2008 Jets are flying high after win over Patriots By Jane McManus The Journal News Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kentucky Jet Posted November 15, 2008 Author Share Posted November 15, 2008 Cotchery Sets Off Flashback to Tyree By GREG BISHOP David Tyree settled into his living-room couch on Thursday night and switched to the Jets Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kentucky Jet Posted November 15, 2008 Author Share Posted November 15, 2008 Jets are looking Super Saturday, November 15, 2008 BY J.P. PELZMAN-STAFF WRITER When Jerricho Cotchery woke up Friday morning, he discovered that his twisting, rolling catch in which he trapped the ball against his helmet with his left hand already had become an Instant Classic on ESPN's "SportsCenter," much like David Tyree's somewhat similar catch in the Super Bowl in February. But as Leon Washington was quick to point out Friday, "We didn't win the Super Bowl [Thursday] night. It was just a divisional game against a rival opponent." True, but it was the kind of win that can make a team and its fans dream about the ultimate NFL game. And while the Jets (7-3) understand the magnitude of only their second win over now second-place New England (6-4) in the last 13 meetings, they're savoring it with their usual approach. "We understood before the game the magnitude" of it, said Cotchery, who had five receptions for 87 yards and a touchdown, which was set up by his own incredible 46-yard catch. "We understood what it meant, period. We wanted to be ready for everything, to come out with a victory [over the Patriots], to make that next step. The Buffalo game was a big game for us and that made the St. Louis game important. And the St. Louis game made the New England game important, so to be able to pull out that victory was another big step for us and now we have to move on and focus on the Tennessee game" on Nov. 23. Yet Washington, a third-year running back and kick returner, couldn't ignore the significance of this win. "New England had dominated the division and the Jets for the last seven or eight years," he said. "It was great for us to go out and make that statement. ... The biggest thing I see about this team is when we go into a game, we don't think we can win, we don't believe we can win. You got a sense [Thursday night] before the game that we knew we were going to win the game. That goes a long way." "It was a very good mood on the plane ride home," coach Eric Mangini said with a laugh. "It's a very short plane ride home. It has felt long sometimes in the past, but this one felt very short. ... What I like about [the Jets' attitude] is as happy as everybody was with the victory and those things, it's still the attention was shifting to the things that we needed to get corrected." Those things obviously don't include Cotchery's incredible hands. "Jerricho has unbelievable hands," Mangini marveled, "and some of the things that he comes down with are amazing. He's such an understated guy that you lose track of how gifted he is as a receiver." "I wanted to do everything in my power to make that catch," said Cotchery, who made the play despite being interfered with by Ellis Hobbs. "I couldn't get my other hand to the ball so I had to make sure I could get the ball close to me and hold on as tight as I could." And the Jets hope to hold onto first place in the AFC East the same way. MANGINI DEFENDS DECISION: The coach took some heat for choosing not to blitz Matt Cassel on New England's final drive, which ended with his 16-yard scoring pass to Randy Moss with one second left in regulation. "When you play the type of defense that we were playing," Mangini said, "we were going to be able to protect the sidelines, jam the receivers and really the only open area is short and in the middle of the field where you want them to catch all the balls because that keeps the clock going. It's about 16 seconds per play is what it typically takes. "If you can make them go the long hard way and eat up that time on the clock you put pressure on them two different ways. ... It's not something new that was just developed." When Jerricho Cotchery woke up Friday morning, he discovered that his twisting, rolling catch in which he trapped the ball against his helmet with his left hand already had become an Instant Classic on ESPN's "SportsCenter," much like David Tyree's somewhat similar catch in the Super Bowl in February. But as Leon Washington was quick to point out Friday, "We didn't win the Super Bowl [Thursday] night. It was just a divisional game against a rival opponent." True, but it was the kind of win that can make a team and its fans dream about the ultimate NFL game. And while the Jets (7-3) understand the magnitude of only their second win over now second-place New England (6-4) in the last 13 meetings, they're savoring it with their usual approach. "We understood before the game the magnitude" of it, said Cotchery, who had five receptions for 87 yards and a touchdown, which was set up by his own incredible 46-yard catch. "We understood what it meant, period. We wanted to be ready for everything, to come out with a victory [over the Patriots], to make that next step. The Buffalo game was a big game for us and that made the St. Louis game important. And the St. Louis game made the New England game important, so to be able to pull out that victory was another big step for us and now we have to move on and focus on the Tennessee game" on Nov. 23. Yet Washington, a third-year running back and kick returner, couldn't ignore the significance of this win. "New England had dominated the division and the Jets for the last seven or eight years," he said. "It was great for us to go out and make that statement. ... The biggest thing I see about this team is when we go into a game, we don't think we can win, we don't believe we can win. You got a sense [Thursday night] before the game that we knew we were going to win the game. That goes a long way." "It was a very good mood on the plane ride home," coach Eric Mangini said with a laugh. "It's a very short plane ride home. It has felt long sometimes in the past, but this one felt very short. ... What I like about [the Jets' attitude] is as happy as everybody was with the victory and those things, it's still the attention was shifting to the things that we needed to get corrected." Those things obviously don't include Cotchery's incredible hands. "Jerricho has unbelievable hands," Mangini marveled, "and some of the things that he comes down with are amazing. He's such an understated guy that you lose track of how gifted he is as a receiver." "I wanted to do everything in my power to make that catch," said Cotchery, who made the play despite being interfered with by Ellis Hobbs. "I couldn't get my other hand to the ball so I had to make sure I could get the ball close to me and hold on as tight as I could." And the Jets hope to hold onto first place in the AFC East the same way. MANGINI DEFENDS DECISION: The coach took some heat for choosing not to blitz Matt Cassel on New England's final drive, which ended with his 16-yard scoring pass to Randy Moss with one second left in regulation. "When you play the type of defense that we were playing," Mangini said, "we were going to be able to protect the sidelines, jam the receivers and really the only open area is short and in the middle of the field where you want them to catch all the balls because that keeps the clock going. It's about 16 seconds per play is what it typically takes. "If you can make them go the long hard way and eat up that time on the clock you put pressure on them two different ways. ... It's not something new that was just developed." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kentucky Jet Posted November 15, 2008 Author Share Posted November 15, 2008 QB'S 'CONFIDENT NERVOUSNESS' HAS JETS ON TOP By MARK CANNIZZARO November 15, 2008 Superman was nervous, shaking in his cape. It's true, before the most important drive in as long as anyone can remember for the JetsNew York Jets , Brett Favre was shaking in his cleats as he walked to the huddle in overtime against the Patriots with the future of a franchise hanging precariously in the balance. "I was nervous as heck," Favre conceded after leading the Jets to their epic and electrifying 34-31 overtime win over the hated Patriots on Thursday night at Gillette Stadium with the kind of flawless performance that will further forge his legend en route to the Hall of Fame. "Everyone's coming up (and saying), 'Hey, this is where you do your thing.' And I'm thinking, 'My God, why can't we make this easier?' " Favre said. "It's true, that's what I'm capable of doing, but believe me there was no one more nervous in this building than me. "I'm no different than anyone else." That's where Favre is wrong. Dead wrong. This guy is different. Just look at the results. Just look at how many times he has done this. Just look at the way he conducts himself under the most excruciating of pressure. Just ask his teammates. "You get into the huddle and you look into No. 4's eyes and you know you are going to have a chance to win," running back Leon WashingtonLeon Washington said yesterday. "The first thing he said when he came into the huddle was how sure he was that we were going to go down and put points on the board. "I heard he said he was nervous, but to me that's more a confident nervousness. When Brett has ball in his hands at the end of the game you know you're going to have a chance to win." Favre, methodically leading the Jets into game-winning field goal range, showed his character, his resilience, and why he was brought here with the hope that there will be more and more of these moments to carry the Jets deep into January and perhaps beyond. "Brett just instills confidence in the group," coach Eric Mangini said. "There's a sense of ease when he has the ball, because you feel like he's going to get it to the right place. If the play doesn't look like it's supposed to look, he's going to make something happen that makes it right." Wide receiver Jerricho CotcheryJerricho Cotchery said he "didn't see any nervousness" on Favre's face in the huddle during that game-winning drive. "I just saw a quiet confidence when he stepped into the huddle," Cotchery said. "When he stepped into the huddle we knew we were going to be able to get it done because that's the way he's been the entire year. "We brought him in here for situations like (Thursday) night - to lead us down in those crucial moments. We brought him in to be able to lead this team to where we need to go." The Jets, who own first place in the AFC East by themselves for the first time in some seven years, cannot fall into a trap of contentment after finally vanquishing their rival. The division is still very tight. The Titans, their next opponent, depending on what happens this Sunday between Tennessee and Jacksonville, still could be undefeated when the Jets go to Nashville on Nov. 23. And the Jets will be coming off one of their biggest recent victories. "Who knows what happens from this point forward, but I think it does a lot for our team," Favre said of beating the Patriots. "It's a big win, but the Patriots still have a lot of football left, they'll be right in the thick of it as always. We just gave ourselves a much better shot." Indeed, the Jets took a one-game lead on the Patriots and tied the season series in taking first place in the division. "It wasn't the Super Bowl," Favre said. "We've still got a lot of football left, but that was fun. It was one game. A big one, I'll say that." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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