OAKLAND – From every angle, this will be a colossal showdown.
It’ll be a showdown between the Jets and Raiders with the 9-6 Jets having their playoff lives hanging in the balance and the 10-5 Raiders trying to hang on to the No. 2 seed in the AFC playoffs and the bye that comes with it.
Exactly like in last season’s climactic regular-season finale in Baltimore against the eventual Super Bowl-champion Ravens, a Jets’ win today at the Network Associates Coliseum and they’re playoff-bound for the first time since 1998 and only the second time since 1991.
A Jets’ loss and the only way they can qualify for the playoffs is if Dick Vermeil’s Chiefs can defeat the Seahawks in Seattle today.
The ramifications of this game, though, go far beyond the above-mentioned consequences, as crucial as they are.
This game, particularly if the Jets lose, will surely begin to shape a new Jets’ team in this Herman Edwards era.
Beginning, very possibly, with Vinny Testaverde’s departure, a loss will mark the beginning of the dismantling of this team, whose legacy will be one of this: They were a talented group that was just good enough to get a sniff at the playoffs, but were never better than 9-7.
As the Jets so desperately hope that they have what it takes to avoid a second consecutive season of embarrassing December failure after a promising – teasing – start, here is the reality of their plight:
To use a golf analogy, the Jets are like the golfer who’s trying to break 90 for the first time and, after shooting a 42 on the front nine, they’re staggering to the finish as the pressure mounts with each hole. They’re the guy who double bogeyed Nos. 16 and 17 and actually believes he’s going to birdie No. 18 to shoot that 89.
Sure it’s possible, but how probable?
The Jets are that dreamer golfer. Despite playing tight and choking in a 14-9 loss to the Bills last week, the Jets have the audacity to think they’re going to do something today that they haven’t done since 1962 – beat the Raiders in Oakland.
If they are able to muster the verve to do it, it’ll go down as one of the most improbable Jets’ victories in franchise history considering the odds stacked against them.
If they lose, these Jets will not appear next season as we know them.
The biggest change very well might be Testaverde, who’s owed a $9 million bonus the first week of June.
If Testaverde is unable, for the second consecutive season, to get his team into the playoffs after a start that almost guaranteed a post-season berth, it has to be over for him as a Jet, time for Edwards and GM Terry Bradway to turn the page to Chad Pennington and move in a different direction.
Bill Parcells always said you are what your record says you are. And Testaverde has been nothing but ordinary the last two seasons.
Edwards will not stand for ordinary.
Cornerback Aaron Glenn, when asked how much of a crime it would be for this team not to make the playoffs this season based on the talent it has and the 9-5 start it got off to, said it would be “mind-boggling” not to make it.
“Hopefully,” Glenn said on Thursday, “this is our chance to capitalize. We have a core of veterans here who have had a taste of the AFC Championship Game [in 1998], and it was a sweet taste. The way this league is, you never know when you’re going to get this opportunity again.
“Look at the Giants,” Glenn went on. “They were in the Super Bowl last year and didn’t even make the playoffs this year. Jessie Armstead told me, ‘We didn’t take advantage of the opportunity.’
“This could be a final run for a lot of guys on this team, period.”
