This is what happens when a multitude of starving football fans are forced to wait 54 weeks for breath. This was the second half of the roar that had begun 374 days earlier, when Aaron Rodgers ran onto the field at MetLife Stadium with an American flag in his hands.
There were 83,345 people there that night, and they were going crazy. MetLife Stadium had never felt so electric. Maybe it was louder on Christmas Eve afternoon when Eli Manning found Victor Cruz for 99 yards, but that was cause and effect. On Sept. 11, 2023, it had been all about preparation. It had been all about crescendo.
So, it's all about silence.
Four plays into the season, someone kicked out a power outlet. It took until last night for the power to come back on. This time there were 80,812 of them. Finally, they got a chance to roar. Finally, they got a chance to grunt. And the Jets gave them a solid 60 minutes to do it. It ended 24-3, and it was as resounding a beating as the score indicates.
“I love the screams, I love the yells,” said defensive end Will McDonald IV, two more sacks on the night, one tackle for loss, part of a defensive ferocity that Pats quarterback Jacoby Brissett will watch in his sleep all weekend. “I love listening to them. We do it for them.”
The Jets scored three more touchdowns on Thursday night, the third straight game in which they've scored that many, and they hadn't done it since… (looks at watch)… 1989. They hadn't beaten the Patriots that soundly since… (looks at watch again)… 1998, which was two years before the Pats hired the Jets' defensive coordinator for that 31-10 win, a guy named Bill Belichick.
So if this is starting to feel like something else, that's because it is. Opening night in San Francisco suddenly seems like a long time ago, even though it's only been 11 days. The Week 2 getaway to Nashville suddenly seems almost quaint. The Jets didn't play a perfect game, but it sure felt perfect, like it was a long time ago.
“That was a really special night,” Rodgers said, after a night in which he completed 27 of 35 passes for 281 yards and two TDs, a night in which he made about a half-dozen throws that maybe a half-dozen quarterbacks who ever lived could have completed.
And on some of those throws that were a little high or a little low or a little wide, their receiving corps stepped up and caught most of them, too.
(Funny how a quarterback with Rodgers' pedigree inspires stickier fingers like that; somewhere in Denver, Zach Wilson probably shook his head sadly, thinking “I could have used some of THAT last year”…)
“A very significant week,” Rodgers said.
So did the Jets. They had a two-to-one possession advantage. They limited the Patriots to 139 yards, nearly a third of that on the 46-yard halftime drive that closed the game. They were active and aggressive, and kept chasing the Pats off the field.
“I thought they were really good,” Jets coach Robert Saleh said of his defense. “We talked about a standard style of play and strategy with relentless effort.” All of that was on display Thursday.
And sure: Maybe you can qualify this by saying it’s “just the Patriots,” who were supposed to be terrible by all accounts before the season. But then the Pats went to Cincinnati and beat Joe Burrow and the Bengals two weeks ago. Last week they beat the Seahawks in Foxborough, Massachusetts, let them come back late and lost in overtime.
They came very close to getting within 2-0, and the Jets made them look like a neighborhood team all night.
“It’s only three weeks, buddy,” Saleh said with a laugh.
But they have improved in each of those weeks. They are trending upward. The depleted 49ers humiliated them in Week 1, and though the Titans threatened them in Week 2, they held firm. The defense on Thursday lived up to its reputation. And so, for that matter, did the quarterback.
“It may not be what it used to be,” Saleh said. “But there’s still a lot left.”
Tight end Tyler Conklin (five receptions, 93 yards) said: “We all know how great Aaron is. It’s great to see his progress every week. When we get to the halfway point of the season, I can only imagine what he’s going to be like. He’s a Hall of Famer for a reason.”
There were expectations around this whole team for a reason too. On Thursday we got a tantalizing preview of what that could really mean.
