The New York Jets went to Miami on Monday night and played a 1-3 Dolphins team that is better than its record indicates.
The exciting, back-and-forth, 31-27 affair resulted in the home team doing what it couldn’t do in Week Two against the Colts on Monday night -- driving down the field with the game on the line and getting a touchdown for the win.
Against the 1985 Bears Jets defense.
New York coach Rex Ryan said after the game that it was a “complete embarrassment by our defense and by me.”
“I didn’t have the defense prepared the way they should have been, and I take full responsibility for that,” Ryan said. “I’ve never been involved in a game like that in my life; our offense did tremendous and gave us every opportunity to win the game. At the end I thought about using timeouts but I said you know what, they’re not scoring. I was wrong.
“I’m just kind of at a loss for words with our defensive performance. We made that quarterback look like Dan Marino. He was pretty good though, he deserves credit. We have to do a better job at defending that long pass.
“It was just a horrendous day for our defense. You know, we’re a hell of a team and I believe that. I think we have plenty of talent, but we just have to play a hell of a lot better than we did today. Again, that’s my responsibility, and it’s also my responsibility to get the team ready to go against Buffalo next week. We’re not going to feel sorry for ourselves; we’re going to play a hell of a lot better than we did today.”
ESPN’s Steve Young, whose aversion to brevity often makes us wonder how he was ever able to get a play called in the huddle before the 40-second clock expired, summed the situation up with uncharacteristic conciseness after the game: “If you’re gonna talk a big game like Rex does, then you need to bring a big stick. And tonight they didn’t bring a stick at all.”
Indeed, the Jets allowed 413 total yards and 31 points, including 21 in the fourth quarter.
Though the final drive, during which Chad Henne led the Dolphins down the field in a way that Chad Pennington couldn’t when the Colts game was in the balance, delivered the win, the eye-opening play came when Ted Ginn got behind Darrelle Revis, supposedly the best cover corner to lace up a pair of cleats since Deion Sanders.
Ginn, who previously had four yards receiving for the entire night, streaked past Revis and the safety arrived just in time to watch Ginn manage to catch the ball for a 53-yard score.
And so the Fins won in Week Five, and every other team in the AFC East lost. Miami is now 2-3 -- and the Jets and Patriots are 3-2.
Miami gets a week off to prepare for a visit from the Saints before a rematch with the Jets and a trip to New England. It’s a tall order, but if the team that showed up last night shows up in each of those games, the Dolphins could be in good position to make some noise in 2009, after all.
