Mike Celizic

Beware the team that’s so young and so new at the playoffs that it doesn’t know what it can’t do.

Beware the New York Jets.

Most of the national ink is going to the big names on the glamour teams: the Cowboys and Favres, the Saints and Mannings. There’s only so much a football fan can absorb in one week, and you can’t waste valuable brain cells learning stuff about teams you don’t figure to be here beyond this round.

In some quarters, the Jets are the “smart” pick to be the postseason surprise. But if you look at them with a cold eye, it’s hard to find a mirror so warped it will make rookie quarterback Mark Sanchez look savvy enough to beat Chargers veteran Philip Rivers, one of the league's best quarterbacks.

What makes the Jets dangerous is that there is such a mirror and the Jets own it. It’s the same mirror that shows them the reflection of a team that should be the favorite to win the Super Bowl.

Just ask their coach, the voluble Rex Ryan, whose father, Buddy, was the guru who created the famed “46” defense and later, as the Eagles’ coach, put bounties on other players as added incentive for his defense.

"I think we have the best defense; I know we do. I think we have the best rushing attack. I want this football team. If I had a choice to coach any team in this tournament, I would choose this one,” Ryan said. And that was before the Jets eliminated the Bengals last week. Nothing that happened in that game has dissuaded him from that belief.

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But what Ryan believes is worthless unless the team believes it, too. And it’s clear from the way the Jets are playing that they have no idea just how slim their chances are.

Young teams that refuse to understand that they can’t just waltz into the playoffs and start slapping the NFL’s established powers around are teams that forge upsets. The Jets team who won Super Bowl III was like that. Everybody knew they were supposed to lie down and let the Colts walk all over them, but Joe Namath didn’t get that memo.

Usually, young teams wake up and realize just where they are and what they’re trying to accomplish. We saw this with the Tampa Bay Rays two years ago. Blithely unaware of the enormity of what they were doing, they sailed through the American League playoffs. But when they got to the World Series they suddenly realized where they were. Instead of going out and just letting the game happen, they tried to win.

And when that happened, they didn’t have a chance against the Phillies.

Coaches or managers have little control over these things. They can set a tone, but they can’t control how their players’ minds work. It’s not every coach who’s smart enough to have Joe Willie Namath leading his team.

It remains to be seen just how good Sanchez is. He’s been impressively resilient this year. When he’s had dreadful games, he hasn’t let it grind him down. Against the Bengals, he was a model of cool efficiency, hitting several big plays that the Jets had to have to win.

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He’s lucky in that he doesn’t have to win the game by himself. The Jets have a superior running game and their defense — featuring Darrelle Revis, the game's best shut-down corner — can make your life miserable. Sanchez’s job is not to make the mistake that loses the game. So far he hasn’t, but it’s still early.

In the meantime, Ryan keeps pumping up his team’s confidence, especially on the defensive side of the ball. He’s too politically correct — all coaches are — to come out and say what he really thinks, but if you hang around him enough, it’s not hard to tell what’s really going on underneath his hat.

When Ryan tells the media, “We’re going to give them everything we have,” what he’s really thinking is more along the lines of a threat once delivered by Moe the bartender from the Simpsons: “I’m gonna stuff sausages down their throat and sic starving dogs up their butt.”

Unlike Moe, Ryan would really do it.

Another reason the Jets are dangerous.

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