Far cry from '86 Jets

First home playoff game in 12 years shows team's progress

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Posted: Tuesday January 05, 1999 09:50 PM

Heading into the playoffs, Vinny Testaverde (left) and his Jets are on a hot streak, unlike Ken O'Brien and the 1986 Jets Rick Stewart/Allsport

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. (AP) -- The last time the New York Jets were the hosts of an NFL playoff game, they were an injury-ravaged team coming off a severe late-season swoon with uncertainty at quarterback.

The Jets who play Jacksonville at the Meadowlands on Sunday are the healthiest team in the postseason, won their final six games, and have the AFC's most efficient quarterback, Vinny Testaverde.

"I think we proved a lot during the season," said fullback Keith Byars, one of the few injured Jets, who is expected back from a broken arm. "We've got confidence from the way we played. But we know we have to turn that confidence into production."

In 1986, the Jets also had supreme confidence as they built a 10-1 record with a nine-game winning streak. Their offense was just as prolific as the current one that finished fourth in the overall rankings and scored 416 points. The opportunistic defense, constructed much differently from the Bill Parcells-Bill Belichick unit that uses schemes and varying personnel, also was dynamic.

Those were the days of the New York Sack Exchange, the most feared pass rush in the AFC. Lance Mehl was one of the game's best linebackers. When they had the ball, the Jets relied on the running of Freeman McNeil, the outstanding receiving trio of Wesley Walker, Al Toon and tight end Mickey Shuler, and the arm of Ken O'Brien.

But unlike the team that this season earned the Jets' first division title since the merger in 1970, that club faltered down the stretch. Mehl and defensive linemen Joe Klecko, Mark Gastineau and Marty Lyons all got hurt. So did most of the offensive linemen.

O'Brien, never steady in the pocket when things broke down, fell apart under constant pressure.

Coach Joe Walton and his staff couldn't stop a slide that dropped the depleted Jets from the top of the division.

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"We had a great year going," Lyons recalled, "and then we were playing with only half of our starters, and that's a tough way to win football games."

Still, the '86 Jets squeezed into the playoffs, thanks to their hot start. And they beat Kansas City in a wild-card game at Giants Stadium before succumbing in overtime -- thanks to Gastineau's foolish roughing-the-passer penalty in the dying moments of regulation with New York ahead -- at Cleveland.

That's ancient history for today's players, none of whom were with those Jets. Byars and Pepper Johnson were the only ones in the league and both with other teams. And it isn't something Parcells thinks about. He was busy coaching the Giants to the Super Bowl title that season.

Parcells had New England in the Super Bowl two years ago when the Jets were 1-15 and the worst team in the league for the second straight year, lacking discipline and a consistent work ethic. Many of coach Rich Kotite's players took the easy route.

One thing the '96 Jets had in common with the team of a decade earlier was some talent on which Parcells could build. Receivers Keyshawn Johnson and Wayne Chrebet, linebacker Mo Lewis, cornerback Aaron Glenn, safety Victor Green, tackle Jumbo Elliott, guard Matt O'Dwyer and tight end Kyle Brady gave him a nucleus and a dozen years after their last contending team, the Jets went 12-4.

"I didn't study the team intensely, but I had an idea of what some of these guys were," Parcells said. "I played this team a lot when I was in New England.

"I didn't envision anything, and we knew it would be hard. You just come in and try to do what you think needs to be done. It never goes smoothly or the way you might envision, and it never involves the same people you think."

Of course, that 1986 team didn't go into the playoffs with the same people it expected to have. This club has just about everybody available.

 

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