Divisional Playoffs
Raiders 30
Jets 10
OAKLAND – The Jets had delicious designs on ending their season on the West Coast.
It’s just that Oakland is further north of the place they planned on finishing their magical season – San Diego, the site of Super Bowl XXXVII.
And, it’s a little too early on the calendar for their storybook ending.
After the miraculous climb from 1-4 and 2-5 to the AFC East title and the second round of the playoffs, the Jets’ excellent adventure ended last night.
Their wild ride came to a screeching halt in the bitter disappointment of a 30-10 playoff loss to the hated Raiders with a trip to the AFC Championship Game hanging in the balance as the door prize at Network Associates Coliseum.
“We really had plans to go all the way to San Diego and it stopped here and it hurts,” Jets’ CB Ray Mickens said.
“I felt this was one of the greatest seasons I’ve ever been a part of, and when you don’t accomplish your goal it tends to make you feel worse than you’ve ever felt,” Curtis Martin (16-74 rushing) said. “It was one of the best seasons and yet right now it feels like one of the worst seasons.
“We came together like I’ve never seen a team come together,” Martin added. “We just didn’t finish the job. The opportunity was there. We just let it slip away from us.”
For the second consecutive January, the Jets’ season ended in a playoff loss against the Raiders in Oakland; they lost in the wild-card round here a year ago.
It was the fourth meeting between the two teams in the past 13 months and it was the third Raiders’ victory.
And so, the Raiders – not the Jets – advance to the AFC Championship Game, which they’ll host for the second time in the last three seasons, playing the Titans for a trip to the Super Bowl. Where did it all go wrong for the Jets, who rode into this game playing so well?
The Jets lost because they turned the ball over four times, allowing the Raiders to score 17 points off the damaging gaffes.
They lost because Chad Pennington, after his marvelously flawless season, finally stumbled, throwing two INTs and losing two fumbles, playing his worst game as a pro (21-of-47 for 183 yards, 1 TD, 2 INTs and a 44.9 rating).
“There’s an old saying, ‘As the quarterback goes so goes the offense and so goes the team,’ ” Pennington said. “I didn’t go today. I didn’t give us a chance. I was struggling all day long and I don’t know why. It’s frustrating because I didn’t feel like I was myself out there.”
He sure didn’t look like himself, floating several passes and generally looking inaccurate. This was clearly the first time of his starting career that Pennington has truly been smacked in the mouth.
“I didn’t see where he was very poised,” Romanowski said. “We’ll see if this guy is the next Joe Montana. I think we saw tonight that he’s not.”
In the end, the Jets lost because the Raiders are just better than they are.
That was obvious as the Raiders broke open a 10-10 game at the half with 20 unanswered points in the second half.
NFL MVP Rich Gannon (20-of-30, 283 yards, 2 TDs, 1 INT, 105.3 rating) gave the Raiders a 17-10 lead with a 29-yard scoring pass to WR Jerry Porter (6 catches, 123 yards).
Thirty seconds earlier, Raiders’ CB Tory James picked off a Pennington pass to set up the score.
The Raiders took an insurmountable 24-10 lead with 14:15 remaining in the game when Gannon connected with Jerry Rice on a nine-yard scoring pass, Rice’s NFL record-tying 21st post-season TD.
The game essentially ended for the Jets when Pennington fumbled a hand-off attempt to Richie Anderson without being touched with 12:09 remaining in the game. It was the Jets’ – and Pennington’s – fourth turnover of the game.
“Hopefully this team has learned a lesson from what happened to us,” Herman Edwards said. “Obviously, we want to try to get back in this situation again, because [losing before the Super Bowl] is not where we want to be.”
