Matthews: Whatever you call them, they aren't the Same Old Jets

CINCINNATI

You can say a lot of things about the 2009 New York Jets, not all of them entirely favorable.

You can say they benefited greatly by playing stronger but uninterested teams during the final weeks of the regular season.

You can say their vaunted defense, statistically the best in the NFL, still has a couple of leaks when it comes to stopping the run.

You can even say, as some have, that they "backed into" the playoffs, although of course you would be wrong.

The one thing you can't say, the one thing you should never say again, is "Same Old Jets." Not even if the road ends next week in San Diego or Indianapolis, where Peyton Manning is likely to play the whole game.

No matter what happens from here, it's time to retire that one, at least for now.

Because these are not the Same Old Jets. Not as long as Rex Ryan is giving the orders and his players - a collection of mostly young, athletic types sprinkled with a couple of graybeards - are following them.

Saturday's wild-card playoff game against the Cincinnati Bengals was a game the Same Old Jets would have blown, even after having laid a 37-0 beating on the same team just six days earlier.

In fact, they had the perfect opportunity early in the fourth quarter. Cedric Benson burst untouched for a 47-yard touchdown run that cut the Jets' lead to 21-14 on the first play after Chad Ochocinco caught his first pass of the game, ensuring that at the very least, he would not have to change his last name back to Johnson.

At that point, there was more than one person in the pressbox - OK, I was one of them - and thousands more in front of televisions all over the tri-state area thinking the same horrid thought: Here comes the Pick-Six. There goes the game, and the season.

Welcome back, Same Old Jets.

But the Same Old Jets did not come back. Instead, it was the New Young Jets, guys such as Shonn Greene and Mark Sanchez and Dustin Keller who marched the ball right back down the field to set up a field goal by Jay Feely that provided them what turned out to be their final margin of victory, a 24-14 lead.

"I was just like, 'Let's go. Let's play. Let's get those points back,' " said Sanchez, one of the New Jets.

But the biggest reason these are not the Same Old Jets is not the young, increasingly poised quarterback or the shutdown cornerback who shut Ochocinco's mouth or the rookie tailback who has come on like gangbusters in the second half of the season.

It is the coach whose mouth has been writing the checks his team has been more than willing to cash.

As the Jets came off the field after their first playoff win in more than five years, no member got a more raucous ovation from the Jets fans lining the tunnel to the victors' locker room than the coach who needed less than a season to change a culture and now may be on the way to changing a history.

"Yes, a coach can change the atmosphere, and coach Ryan has done it,'' said Darrelle Revis, a third-year Jet who just emerged from the two-year funk of the Eric Mangini Era. "I tell you, with Mangini, it wasn't good here. Everybody had mixed feelings about him and as a team, you can't go far like that.''

Revis acknowledged that under Mangini, the Jets seemed to be moving in the right direction, especially after back-to-back wins over New England and then-unbeaten Tennessee gave them an 8-3 record in November of 2008.

"But then it just started slipping, and when it slipped, we couldn't get it back, and I think [Mangini] was one of the reasons,'' Revis said. "There's things you just gotta ease up on and he just couldn't ease up. I mean, we're men, we're not boys, and I think Mangini kinda ran it like a high school team.''

By contrast, Revis said, Ryan trusts his players. In return, they trust him back.

A year ago, he promised a visit to the White House for his team during Barack Obama's first term. Earlier this week, he declared his team "favorites'' to win the Super Bowl. Two days ago, he was brazen enough to include a victory parade in his schedule of events for the Jets' offseason, which he expects will begin Feb. 8.

Not one of the New Young Jets has dared question him, nor had any reason to.

"We believe everything that Rex tells us,'' Keller said. "He said we were going to the Super Bowl. Now we just have to go out and execute it.''

If these were the Same Old Jets, they would have executed themselves by now.