Jets' big talk fuels huge expectations

Funny, but it sure doesn't feel like the Jets are 0-1 heading into today's pivotal AFC East showdown with the Patriots. It feels more like they're 0-4, no?

Such is life when you puff your chest from Day 1, pronounce yourselves ready to win the Super Bowl and then proceed to fall flat on your collective face in Week 1. With great expectations created and then articulated constantly by the Jets' uber-confident coach and his minions, this is the way it's going to be: When you win, the buzz will only escalate; when you lose, the skeptics will hit back that much harder.

That's why a one-point loss to a very good Ravens team - the team I believe will win the Super Bowl - seemed like a month's worth of losses. In fact, it felt like the margin of defeat was far greater than just one point, didn't it? Felt more like 21.

"We lost to a pretty good football team," Ryan told Patriots beat reporters this week during a conference call. "I believe the Patriots lost to them in the playoffs the last time I looked."

Now that was a lopsided loss; the Ravens pummeled the Patriots in Foxboro, 33-14, in the first round of last year's playoffs. And it was the Jets who wound up advancing to the AFC Championship Game before losing to the Colts.

"We expect to win every game, and the fact we got beat, if you want to say humbling, it was humbling," Ryan said.

But the second-year coach makes no apologies, even if the volume was decidedly muted in this week's run-up to this highly anticipated AFC East slugfest. No verbal taunts from the Jets this time, and certainly none from Bill Belichick's Patriots, who have turned bland quotes into an art form. Belichick could be facing the 0-16 Lions from the 2008 season, and he'd have you believe they were as difficult an opponent as the '85 Bears.

Before last year's Week 2 matchup against the Patriots - also a Jets' home game - Ryan's crew was crowing all week. It was capped off by former safety Kerry Rhodes saying he not only wanted to beat Tom Brady & Co., he wanted to embarrass them.

The Jets' 16-9 win can hardly be termed embarrassing, but it was certainly a statement game for a first-year coach who is not shy about enunciating his grandiose expectations.

By comparison, the Jets were a cute-and-cuddly team at this stage last year, with a first-year coach and a first-year quarterback and an uncertain future. But after last year's unexpected run to the AFC title game, and with a summer's worth of training camp drama on HBO's "Hard Knocks," complete with plenty of cursing and even more crowing about how good they can be, the Jets are now the team that everyone loves to hate. At least from the outside.

Inside the locker room, they're unbowed and unapologetic. Even after a loss in which they converted just one third-down attempt and made Mark Sanchez look more Bubby Brister than Joe Namath.

Namath himself was highly critical of the loss, suggesting in the aftermath that the Jets created too big a target on their backs with the "Hard Knocks" exposure, and that they couldn't get into a shootout with the Patriots. "A shootout? You gotta have something to be shooting. We haven't been shooting. We can't get in a shootout with anybody."

Namath ripped everyone from Sanchez, to offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer ("we're playing with a conservative play calling style"), to receiver Braylon Edwards ("he has as many drops as he does catches"), to left guard Matt Slauson ("our left guard position was annihilated").

A loss against the Patriots, and who knows what the apoplectic Namath will come up with next. But that's the world the Jets have created for themselves, and they're discovering very early on that the heat is a lot hotter when you tell everyone how great you are and can't back it up.

Maybe that's why Ryan himself suggests this is about as must-win a scenario as you can have so early in the season.

"It is a must-win where you absolutely have to have it?" Ryan said. "No, but it kind of feels like it."

Sure does.