THE JETS’ trip through the playoff simulator began with their first meeting with Bill Parcells two years ago. No January wind whips icier, no playoff heat is as torrid as the coach’s hot-and-cold running personality. Nor is the dread of elimination any more fearsome than the consequences of disappointing Parcells.
The best coaches are ones who put the most pressure on players to toughen them for critical December and January moments that will define their careers. For a team playing its first playoff game in seven years, the Jets will be as prepared by this coaching staff as absolutely possible.
They committed only three penalties and no turnovers in winning the division title on the road, in an atmosphere as close to a playoff experience as any regular-season contest can be. With the earning of the bye came the privilege of being told every day for two weeks by Parcells that the next mistake at the wrong time means exactly that: Bye.
The Jets have not gone from 1-15 to 12-4 in two seasons by waiting for their drafts to mature. They go into Sunday’s game with 19 players holding post-season experience. Although Parcells says he has never added anyone only for intangible reasons, stability was hardly an afterthought.
“The media never understands this, because I was criticized for this the first year in New England, the first year here,” Tuna said yesterday. “But you have to bring in guys who can hold the fort or the downside will never stop.”
Two years of basic training have ended at Fort Parcells with the toughest DI there ever was feeling awfully proud. “We’re not the greatest, but mentally, we’re pretty tough right now,” he said in Buffalo.
So, if any team happy to be in the playoffs for the first time can avoid being just happy to be in the playoffs for the first time, it is a Parcells team. And if any upstart ever seemed setup in Game 1, it’s the Jets.
They are a cold-weather team playing a warm-weather team in January at home. They take a week’s rest in against an opponent that played in the wild-card round, whose gimpy-ankled quarterback is back one game from a three-week absence, whose defense is ranked 25th in the NFL.
The Jets are a seven-point favorite for good reasons, the best of which may be Parcells’ confidence in this group, which he said yesterday is far more tested than his first Patriot playoff team that flunked in Cleveland. “Sure,” he said. “But [the Browns] weren’t that experienced either and we played a good game.” Still, the Patriots went down in their own mistakes, which Parcells says they made by underestimating the intensity of the playoff experience.
“It goes a whole level up,” Parcells said. Be assured that so is this Jags’ offense compared to those Testaverde Browns. Also, that the strength of the Jets’ defense notwithstanding, this game, like most, will come down to mistakes.
“I saw a couple teams this weekend where they didn’t know there was a playoff game going on,” Parcells said. “They thought it was something else. I don’t know what Green Bay’s safeties were doing in the end zone on a 30-yard pass. It was a very serious mistake in judgment.”
The Jets figure to be the team that makes more of those Sunday against a team that has qualified for the playoffs three years running. At the positions where the most killing mistakes are made, the Jets’ playoff experience is scarce.
“Sure, I worry,” Parcells said. “And some of the guys who have experience, it’s been so long, they may have forgotten.”
Somehow, it’s hard to believe that it won’t all come back to Keith Byars and Dave Meggett, both of whom have played in 11 playoff games; Pepper Johnson, who has started in nine; Bryan Cox, who has started in five.
But Jumbo Elliott is the only offensive lineman who has started a post-season game. There is not a wideout who has caught a playoff pass. Vinny Testaverde has been in two January games, four years ago.
The Jaguars have 10 starters left from the 1996 AFC finalists, plus Bryce Paup, who has played in seven playoff games. The younger team in this game is the more tested one.
Of course, in 1996, when the Jaguars made the playoffs for the first time, they went through Buffalo and Denver like they blew through this argument, the ultimate young team feeling no pain. But after squeaking into the playoffs on an unlikely Morten Andersen miss, the Jaguars had no burden of expectations built by a division title or 29 years longing.
Few thought the Giants, who went into the playoffs last year on a roll, could lose to Minnesota, but they unraveled. You would think this Jet team – older, wiser, taught by a playoff Phd – will not end up arguing on the sideline and blowing a nine-point lead in the final 90 seconds.
But it doesn’t usually take catastrophe, only one mistake at the worst possible time, made by a team that goes into the playoffs the next time wiser for the experience.
All this may be irrelevant if the Jets show up with their A game and knock out Brunell. It may come down to a substitute, before it comes down to being no substitute for experience. But if it’s close, we like the team that’s been there over the one that’s been warned.