The Morning After (Week 6 edition)

Monday October 19, 2009 12:22 PM By Roderick Boone

So once I arrived home just before 1 a.m. this morning and awoke the wife out of her slumber with a peck, the first thing she says in a groggy, sleep voice is probably the same thing many of you were/are muttering to yourselves.

"I can't believe they lost," she said.

Yes, not only did they lose in embarrassing fashion to a team they had no business losing to, it's looking like got hit with the double whammy. NT Kris Jenkins, the heart and soul of the defense, appears to be lost for the season with a knee injury.

Jenkins is undergoing more tests today and we probably won't have a definitive word until we speak with Rex Ryan out at The Hangar around 4 p.m. today.

But from the way the players were talking in the locker room afterward, it sounds like the Jets' mountain of a man who was motivated to get that big shiny ring is done for the season.

"I asked my wife what happened and she said when I came in the on the play, that I hit him," DE Shaun Ellis said. "I felt bad about that – that I was part of putting one of our best players out of the game. I have to live with that."

The Jets, too, have to live with not closing the book on the Bills. After Thomas Jones' brilliant 71-yard touchdown run put the Jets ahead 13-3 in the second quarter, the game should've been over. That's when the Jets, as good teams are supposed to do, should've take all the will and spirit out of the Bills and sent them back to Western New York still reeling.

"I think we just didn't push the gas enough," said cornerback Darrelle Revis, who did a good job holding Terrell Owens to just three catches for 13 yards, "just didn't push the pedal hard enough to get this win."

From the get-go, you had the feeling it was going to be one of those games. LG Alan Faneca was called for a false start on the very first play from scrimmage, something that's almost unheard of since teams normally script the first 15 or 20 offensve plays of the game. So it wasn't like he didn't know what play was coming.

In all, the Jets just murdered themselves with boneheaded penalties at the worst time, perhaps none more critical than TE Ben Hartsock's holding call on the Jets' first drive of overtime that put the kabosh on Thomas' apparent first down run on third-and-5 from the Bills' 24. Thomas had got down to about the 12, which would've either allowed the Jets to punch it in or go for the easy chip shot field goal.

Instead, they got backed up and Mark Sanchez (we'll get to him in a second) misfired while looking for TE Dustin Keller on the next play on third-and-13 from the Bills' 32, just one of his seemingly 10,000 incompletions. Look no further than those kind of penalties that came back to haunt the Jets.

"We have to get better at that and look at why," Ryan said. "Those are things that kill you. They’re drive-stoppers. That’s what happened to Buffalo the week before. They had 13 offensive penalties. They’re non-aggressive penalties, and they kill you. We have to really look at what we're doing and see if it’s something that our players are not understanding. We have to look long and hard at the mistakes we’re making."

So the Jets wasted a career/franchise-record day for Jones, who had 210 of the Jets' 318 rushing yards. They had 212 rushing yards on the first half alone and although they got the ground game going in a way that we've been wanting to see all year, it means nothing in the grand scheme of things with the way the offense performed as a hole.

That brings us to the rookie quarterback, who got choked up a bit during his postgame press conference and had to collect himself before giving a few answers. He really looked like he was about to cry a couple of times because he was that bitterly disgusted and upset with the way he played, throwing a ridiculous five interceptions and finishing with a quarterback rating of 8.3 that mirrors the amount you'd pay for a couple of cups of coffee and a bagel or two.

If I'm Ryan, as tough as it would've been to do and I'll be the first to admit that it would've taken some serious moxie, I pull Sanchez just to let him clear his head for a minute and take a step back from everything. I'm giving Erik Ainge -- not Kellen Clemens -- a crack at giving the team a bit of a spark because it was Ainge who outperformed Clemens in the preseason, although Clemens remains No. 2 on the depth chart.

Ryan said he did think about yanking Sanchez, but felt it was better to go with him than to insert anyone else. Sanchez said he never thought he was going to get the hook.

"It’s my mental makeup," said Sanchez, who hadn't lost consecutive games during his high school or college careers. "As frustrated as I was, it’s hard to say, but even after the fourth or fifth interception, I’m thinking we’re going to get one more shot. Just one shot, one drive and we’ll be just fine. If we came out on top things would be different.

"If you make huge mistakes like that and you win you learn a lot, but unfortunately we didn’t. In overtime, we moved the ball OK and we just got stopped there at the end. I just forced it. We have to be able to punt the ball and have faith in our defense and make them drive even longer down the field instead of giving them the ball there almost at midfield."

But to be perfectly honest, the defense wasn't exactly bringing it the way they had been talking they would all week. They finally got a sack, with LB David Harris and DE Marques Douglas pummeling Bills QB Trent Edwards early in the second quarter, knocking him out with what's believed to be a concussion.

Other than a few hits on backup QB Ryan Fitzpatrick -- he escaped the clutches of Ellis on one play -- the Jets once again didn't get much pressure on the quarterback. If they can't do it against a patchwork offensive line, in their own stadium, with a reserve quarterback calling the shots, then when the heck will they?

This has to turn around -- and quickly. The Jets have a date in Oakland with the Raiders on Sunday and anyone who follow this team closely knows they don't play well in the Bay.

"In this league, you've got to forget about it, you've got to let it go," FB Tony Richardson said. "You can't worry about the three games you've won or the three games you've lost because you can't bring those back. So really right now, we've got to go into this mindset that we're 0-0, trying to win one game. Then once we win that one game, then we'll try to figure out how to win another one."

Let's just hope they haven't forgotten how to win. Sure looked that way yesterday, didn't it?