Jets Rediscover Their Smiles and Their Running Game

Jets roll up 253 rushing yards in easy 35-9 win over Colts

There have been better stretches for the Jets than the one they have endured over the last two weeks.

A blowout loss to the 49ers, a closer loss to the Texans, season-ending injuries, quarterback intrigue and an inevitable sense that the season was going into the toilet combined to make for a gloomy air around the team. It's rare that a team has ever needed an easy day's work more than these Jets.

They got one. The Jets found the running game that they often boast about and rarely show, piling up 253 yards on the ground all afternoon on their way to a 35-9 victory.

Shonn Greene went for 161 yards, his first 100+ rushing performance since Week 14 of last season, and scored three touchdowns. Greene showed good burst through holes and actually eluded tacklers here and there in a performance that bore little resemblance to the ones we've seen in the first five weeks of the season.

He got plenty of help. Joe McKnight had a 61-yard dash, the longest by a Jet in three years, and Mark Sanchez threw a pair of touchdown passes in an efficient performance that only asked Sanchez not to make any terrible mistakes. 

Sanchez didn't, Tim Tebow set up a touchdown with a pass to linebacker Nick Bellore on a fake punt and the team started scoring early and just kept rolling all afternoon. There's no question that the Colts have a bad defense, but the Jets needed some kind of confidence to bolster them after so many shots to the gut in the first five weeks. 

How much of that confidence will survive once the team lands in New England to face the Patriots remains to be seen, though there's no doubt they really needed an afternoon to feel good about themselves to stop the ship from sinking. A loss today would have made a 2-6 record a real possibility and it's not fun to think about how ugly things would get at that point. 

This is a much better state of affairs. The defense was equally impressive, stoning Andrew Luck all day and using Antonio Cromartie to great effect on Reggie Wayne.

Now  the Jets can have a week free of discussion about what went wrong and instead, talk about what went right and how to keep things moving in that direction in the weeks to come. 

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