Jets in tough spot for playoff push

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. -- Eric Smith's mind was essentially a DVR over the weekend, replaying Tim Tebow's winning 20-yard touchdown run.

"I was kind of reliving what happened on that play," the Jets safety said Monday, still lamenting losing outside containment on Tebow's scamper with 58 seconds remaining. "It's one of those things. If I had to do it over again, I would say [forget] covering the tight end. I'm just going to run up the field.

"But it's good to get the film [study] over, put it behind us and move on to Buffalo."

After spending three days wallowing in the disappointment of a second difficult defeat in five nights, the Jets got back to work preparing for Sunday's game against the Bills. They're ready to see if they can make a playoff push despite the ominous outlook.

With six games left, the Jets (5-5) are tied with Denver, Tennessee and Buffalo, leaving them a game behind the Bengals (6-4) for the AFC's second wild card. But only four other AFC teams have as many conference losses as the Jets' five, and all four of those teams trail them in the standings. The Bengals, Bills and Broncos have three AFC losses and the Titans have four.

So the Jets will have a tough road to navigate, especially with the Broncos among the teams they're battling. Denver holds the head-to-head tiebreaker after Thursday night's 17-13 win.

"I think everyone kind of feels that it's now or never," safety Jim Leonhard said. "We have to play well now. We can't continue to play inconsistently and we have to find ways to get wins.''

That's the only way the Jets can make the postseason for the third straight year under Rex Ryan. Unless they get help along the way, going 6-0 against teams with a combined 25-35 record might be their lone legitimate shot. Ryan thinks it can be done.

"We have a kind of team that can get hot," he said. "That's been the biggest problem that I see is we've been inconsistent in all three phases, and we have yet to put together a great game where we've played consistently in all areas. Even our special teams, which is an outstanding unit, we've turned the ball over four times.

"Defensively, you play great for 57 minutes or whatever it was and then give up a drive. Our standards are higher than that. We're better than that. Offensively, it's the same thing. Sometimes we look like a million dollars, sometimes we look like $75,000, sometimes we look like nothing. I just think that if we are consistent, and I believe we can be, that we'll be right there in the end."

Said Bart Scott, "We dealt ourselves a bad hand, but we're still in the game . . . We can't afford to lose any more games."

Not if Ryan still has visions of hoisting the Lombardi Trophy he promised he'd deliver this season. "We were hoping we'd be at the top of the AFC, but we're not," he said. "We're not going to dwell on what's behind us. We're going to try to learn from it and move forward. We're not going to get our six wins by looking in the rearview mirror. We have to get better and more consistent. And that's what we plan on doing."