DETROIT – Sam Cowart is starting to look like Sam Cowart again, which is great news for the Jets and bad news for their opponents.
Herman Edwards remembers coaching with the Buccaneers against Cowart when Cowart was a Pro Bowl linebacker in Buffalo. In fact, Cowart injured himself in that game, missed the rest of the 2000 season and missed all of last season.
“At the point he got hurt in third quarter, we couldn’t block him,” Edwards recalled. “He had like 12 tackles. I can remember saying, ‘Who’s blocking that guy?’ Every time I turned around he was tackling somebody or rushing the quarterback. I was like, ‘Why don’t we block that guy?’ “
Cowart, who missed all of the 2001 season with an Achilles’ injury, is just now starting to show the form he displayed in Buffalo. He was a terror against the Dolphins last Sunday night, stuffing Miami RB Ricky Williams and making plays from sideline to sideline.
“Now he’s starting to get back to the form he was at,” Edwards said.
Defensive coordinator Ted Cottrell called Cowart’s performance against the Dolphins “a pre-Achilles’-tendon-surgery-type Sam Cowart.”
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DE John Abraham believes the Jets should enter this game against the Lions having already learned a lesson about teams taking other teams lightly.
“A lot of people thought when we were 2-5 going to San Diego it was going to be a blowout and you saw what happened there,” Abraham said of the Jets’ shocking 44-13 upset victory. “So we can’t go in [to Detroit] with our heads too high thinking this is going to be a ‘W.’ Every game for us is a big game now. Every game is like a homecoming game in high school. We can’t overlook anybody.”
Abraham on the Jets’ defensive turnaround: “We were as far down as we could go. After awhile, you’ve got to buckle down and say, ‘I’m not going to be any worse than this, not going to be the butt of jokes anymore.’ Now we’re working together as a team instead of individuals out there just playing.”
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One of the keys to the Jets’ turnaround has been their change of habits in the turnover department. After falling to minus-6, they’ve climbed back to even entering today’s game. In the Jets’ three wins in the last four games (Minnesota, San Diego, Miami) they’re plus-9 in turnover ratio. The only blemish in that stretch was Cleveland, against which the Jets were minus-3.
