For the Jets, yesterday was full of wildly divergent emotions that spilled into a number of compelling consequences, good and bad.
Yes, the Jets won a game and ended their hideous seven-game losing streak – stop the presses! – smacking around a pathetic and inept Raiders team that had so much trouble getting out of its way in a 26-10 shellacking that the Oakland team buses probably got lost en route to the airport after the game.
The Jets, in winning and improving to 3-10, fell virtually out of the Reggie Bush sweepstakes as the Texans lost again to fall to 1-12 with three games remaining.
None of that, however, seemed to matter, because of the way yesterday began, with what can only described as the ultimate indignity to a cruel season already painful enough to break down the kindest of souls.
It began with news that Curtis Martin, the heartbeat of this team and one of the classiest human beings inside or outside of sports, would miss the final four games of the season so he can have right knee surgery this week.
The decision for Martin – whose right knee has been damaged goods and worsening since a Zach Thomas leg whip in the second week of the season – to shut it down was a highly emotional one on several levels.
Before yesterday, Martin hadn’t missed a start since 1998, having started 119 in a row through varying levels of excruciating pain that would have sidelined the toughest of players.
“When I sat down with Herm (Edwards) in his office [late in the week], Herm said, ‘Just for us to be having this conversation, this thing must be drastic,’ ” Martin recalled. “And it was. I knew on Saturday I couldn’t perform. There’s a difference between just being out there and being able to perform. It came to a point where I felt like I’d be doing the team an injustice being out there.”
Martin’s tolerance for pain has become such legend, it’s easy to take it for granted he’d be out there on any football Sunday when he had a game scheduled.
So you can imagine the scene inside the Jets locker room before the game, with Martin not dressed in game gear while his teammates were suiting up in their pads.
“It was one of the weirdest feelings I’ve had as an NFL player,” Martin would say after the game. “I walked through the trainer’s room in sweats and John Abraham saw me and looked at me weird and said, ‘Curt, this doesn’t even look right. You not in pads before a game . . . I’ve never seen that before.”
Martin’s teammates didn’t even know until after the game that he was finished for 2005, headed for surgery this week.
That, of course, will leave Martin a tantalizing 265 rushing yards short of 1,000 for the season, a mark that would have made him the only player in NFL history to rush for 1,000 or more yards in 11 consecutive seasons.
Martin has never coveted personal records, but he has quietly said in recent months that the 1,000 yards for 11 years in a row was something that would mean the most to him, because it illustrates who he is: consistent, dependable, durable and productive.
Still, though, amidst the bitter disappointment of not getting the chance to finish that feat out, Martin refused to let it break him.
“There are three things I promised myself I would never play for – records, money and fame,” Martin said. “Those three things have never been my focus.”
Martin, who counts $8.1 million against the 2006 salary cap, vowed to be back next year.
“I feel like I can help this team,” he said. “This is just so new to me. I’m like a fish out of water as far as my job goes.”
For the final three games of this season, and as the offseason begins next month, he’ll be hearing a lot about his age (32) and which running back the Jets might pick in the draft (hello DeAngelo Williams?).
But, as Edwards has said so poignantly, “Never bet against Curtis Martin.”
