Bill Belichick and his Patriots drones won’t say anything negative about the Jets, which has Jets coach Rex Ryan grasping for motivational straws.
“I know they say we are a great team, and I see the sarcasm,” Ryan said. “Well, they are going to find out if we are a great team or not, I can tell you that much.”
Yeah! It was all sarcasm! How can you tell, Rex?
“I just sense it, because they all have the same comment,” Ryan said. “That, ‘Well, we’ll just say this and this.’ We’re coming. We’ll show up and see what happens.”
Asked Saturday about that, Belichick just said to take a look at their record. “A lot of teams would like to have their record.”
While the Patriots were probably told not to say anything inflammatory this week, it’s not like this is a new approach. They do it every week, regardless of the opponent. Listening to Belichick before the Thanksgiving game, you’d think Shaun Hill was Joe Montana. Still, Jets players are buying in to Rex’s sarcasm message.
“I heard a few guys talking how great we were, and they never give us credit, so that’s a bunch of bull,” Richardson told Jenny Vrentas of the Newark Star-Ledger. “It is what it is. Playing a little Jedi mind tricks, that’s fine. You can talk all that stuff, but bottom line, you’ve still got to play the game. Doesn’t really faze me too much.”
Defensive end Shaun Ellis said that playing under coach Eric Mangini let them know not to take anything at face value.
“We know they try to feed us a lot of stuff they really don’t mean,” Ellis said.
That’s probably a fair way to approach anything coming out of a coach’s mouth before a big game.