It was November on the calender but the weather was warm and sunny making for more than a few smiles around Giants Stadium before kickoff. The Jets made sure everyone, save a smattering of St. Louis partisans far from home, was smiling over the next three hours with a record-setting 47-3 rout of the Rams. The team followed up a most impressive win at Buffalo with the closest thing the NFL has to a homecoming game, a game which only the most curmudgeonly Jet fan could find a reason to complain.
All in all, it was a rare, memorable day in the Meadowlands. Now forget all about it.
Seriously. That's what the Jets have to do. The only thing that can be on minds right now is Thursday night in Foxborough. The Patriots and a decade of AFC East dominance are staring the Jets in the face, which makes yesterday's laugher seem as far away as a scratchy black-and-white film of Jim Thorpe. The Rams game will be in the Jets history book because of the margin of victory, but it won't hold another whit of importance without a victory in New England this Thursday.
The Jets should be confident at this point in the season. You wouldn't expect anything less, but that's all they should be when preparing for the Patriots. No Tom Brady has meant a low-tech offensive attack, and the defense will likely be without Adalius Thomas because of a broken arm yesterday. Whatever conclusions you try to draw from that, consider that the Bills couldn't do anything offensively yesterday and that the Pats closed out the game with a 19-play drive flawlessly executed by Matt Cassel.
Those two points should eliminate any cockiness from the team's mindset over the next 72 hours. And if they don't, just remember that the hooded genius still patrols the Patriot sideline and that should chill whatever's left over.
“We’re a contender now,” Kris Jenkins said after yesterday's game.
No, you're not. We'll talk again late Thursday night, though.
