NFL

Don't discount Jets' chances

Team will be confident for game with Steelers

Jeff Gross / Getty Images file

New York's Oliver Celestin, left, and B.J. Askew celebrate their win over San Diego. The Jets' win should give them ample confidence entering next week's game against Pittsburgh, writes NBCSports.com's Mike Celizic.

COMMENTARY

By Mike Celizic

NBCSports.com contributor

updated 5:22 p.m. ET Jan. 14, 2005

Before a team can become a champion it must first believe in itself. The fact that this is self-evident doesn’t make it an easy goal to achieve, because belief can’t become reality until a team has demonstrated the ability to back it up.

That’s been the New York Jets’ problem for more years than any of its long-suffering fans care to remember. No matter how much promise the Jets have shown, at some critical point all their bold words have proved to be as empty as a politician’s election-year promises.

Now, finally, the Jets have reason to believe. They won a huge playoff game on the road Saturday against the San Diego Chargers, a game they tried to give away.

If they had lost, the collective psyche of a team that hasn’t won a championship since 1969 would have been crushed like a cockroach at a square dance.

The Jets pulled so many same-old Jets tricks. They committed one of the dumbest penalties ever to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Head coach Herm Edwards and running backs coach Bishop Harris nearly came to blows on the sideline. They blew a 10-point fourth-quarter lead.

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The Jets had it won. They had stopped the Chargers on what should have been the last play of the game, but gave the Chargers a chance to tie when linebacker Eric Barton pulled off what could have become one of the dumbest plays in post-season history.

Barton delivered a gratuitous and illegal forearm to quarterback Drew Brees’ head on that fourth-down play. The Chargers tied the game on the next play and took it into overtime. San Diego had a chance to win, but rookie kicker Nate Kaeding was wide right on a 40-yarder.

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If Kaeding hits, the Jets are roasted, toasted, fried and fricasseed from now until next year. And you could say that they deserved to lose because of what Barton did.

Sometimes, bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to people who have done wrong. That was the story of Kaeding, who will live with his failure for the rest of his career, and Barton, who was bailed out by a missed kick and his own team’s refusal to collapse.

But while the spotlight shines brightest on those two players, the fallout affects entire teams. The Chargers and their coach, Marty Schottenheimer, go home wondering what they have to do to win. The Jets move on feeling that they have been selected by destiny to move on.

Before the game, they only had belief. After, they had had knowledge. They know they all but gave away a game they had won. And they know they shoved the ball down the field and got the winning points when they were granted a reprieve.

Teams that win games like the Jets won are far more dangerous than teams that catch an opponent on a bad day and just roll over them. It is only by staring defeat in the face and coming back to triumph that teams begin to know what they have inside.

Before Saturday, it was legitimate to say the Jets couldn’t win a big game. It was legitimate to wonder whether Chad Pennington could come up with the big plays that win big games.

And as much as the team and Pennington said they were the only ones who believed in themselves, they couldn’t know themselves if what they were saying was true. They had to actually do it.

They weren’t viewed as a threat to anyone on Friday. Now, they’re another of those teams that can upset anyone.

They play good defense, and they played Pittsburgh and New England tough this year. They lost both of those games and they lost the last two games of the season. Yet playing the best teams tough and losing anyway didn’t mean anything because they still lost.

But now it matters that they had their shots in both of those games, and the Steelers better not think differently. Pittsburgh will still be the big favorite, but no one can take the Jets lightly, not after what they did Saturday in San Diego.

Because the Jets won a big game on the road. They faced adversity, survived their own knuckleheaded play, covered each others’ backs, refused to quit, and now they’re playing Pittsburgh with the winner going to the AFC Championship Game.

I still wouldn’t bet on the Jets — the Steelers are still the best team in football — but I’d no longer bet against them.

Mike Celizic writes regularly for NBCSports.com and is a freelance writer based in New York.