Untimely mistakes
Jets tired of losing big games to little opponents
Posted: Tuesday November 17, 1998 04:46 PM
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Curtis Martin has 806 rushing yards this season, but is averaging just 3.4 yards per carry AP |
HEMPSTEAD, New York (AP) -- Here's the way a first-place team loses to a
1-8 team: missed tackles, dropped passes, botched field goals and allowing
a fourth-and-15 conversion in the final minutes.
The New York Jets
committed all of those sins in a 24-23 defeat at Indianapolis. Most galling
was the blown opportunity to remain in a first-place tie with Miami in the
AFC East, while staying ahead of wild-card pursuers in the conference.
The Jets got what they deserved, though.
"We just weren't as sharp as we had to be," coach Bill Parcells admitted.
"If we had been more on top of our game, we would have made those plays.
It's an alertness, an awareness, and when you are really alert and onto
things, those things don't happen.
"When you know you can end the game and you do not do it -- fourth-and-15,
a dropped ball, we miss a field goal -- it frustrates you. We make that one
play, that fourth-and-15 play, and everything else goes away."
What won't go away is the nagging suspicion the Jets can't get up for the
weakest teams on their schedule. They've lost to the three worst teams
they've played -- the Colts are 2-8 now, while Baltimore and St. Louis both
are 3-7.
"For us, for this team, we have to be ready mentally, physically and
emotionally every week, no matter who we are playing," quarterback Vinny Testaverde said. "In
three of the four games we lost this year, the teams didn't have good
records. We can't take anybody for granted."
Did they do that against the Colts, who lost 44-6 at the Jets in Week 3?
Did they not pay heed to Parcells' warnings that Indianapolis would be a
difficult opponent, particularly at the Hoosier Dome?
Were they big-headed and not big-hearted for Sunday's game?
"I don't think it was not having intensity," said Aaron Glenn, who set an
NFL record with a 104-yard runback of a missed field goal at the end of the
first half, the Jets' final points of the day. "It was a factor of they
made more plays than us. Sometimes big plays win games and they made the
big plays.
"We're at the point that is really going to test our maturity and how we'll
do down the stretch -- the best we can, or lay down and be out of it."
Maybe it helps that the rest of the schedule has only one weak opponent,
Carolina (1-9). The Jets seem to get up for the better teams they face, and
Seattle, Buffalo, New England, Miami and Tennessee this week all are at
.500 or above.
"I don't know how we'll respond, but I think it will be positively,"
fullback Keith Byars
said. "We've got to listen to the coach; he is on the mountain. It can't be
left to yourself each week. A lot of guys think they know how and they
don't. The sooner we learn that lesson, the better off we will be."
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