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Are these Jets like those Pats?

Print | Comments () Posted by Adam Kilgore, Globe Staff January 21, 2010 04:04 PM

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There is a notion spreading that the Jets of this season are a new-fangled version of the 2001 Patriots that won the Super Bowl. Tedy Bruschi, a member of that 2001 team, advanced this view yesterday on SportsCenter. He's not the only one who has made the comparison.

Comparing teams and players is a constant exercise in sports, and this one seems like a natural fit -- callow quarterback, defense-minded coach, upstart team, underdog mindset. But that 2001 Patriots team was wholly unique, and it seems like calling these Jets the same kind of team feels like oversimplification. Let's take a look at both squads, broken down into five major categories: quarterback, coach, offense, defense, and how they arrived.

QUARTERBACK: Tom Brady was in his second year and Mark Sanchez is a rookie, but the difference in their playing time prior to becoming the starter is pretty negligent. Brady’s game experience was practically null before Mo Lewis collapsed Drew Bledsoe’s insides, so the only advantage Brady had over Sanchez was one year of working out with an NFL team and observing how things work. They both played at Blue Blood college powers (Michigan and USC), and Sanchez was the fifth overall pick while Brady, as of course you know, was picked in the sixth round.

The role of both quarterbacks could be distilled to Do Not Screw This Up. Brady seemed to grasp that better than Sanchez. In his 15 regular season games and two playoff games, Sanchez has thrown 21 interceptions and completed 54.7 percent of his passes. 2001 Brady threw 13 picks and completed 63.5 percent of his passes.

So yes, both are young quarterbacks, but Brady played with a steady hand and like the caretaker his team wanted him to be. Sanchez seems to be a trainwreck waiting to happen, but maybe he’s learned. On Dec. 20, he threw three interceptions and completed 18 of 32 passes as the Jets gagged a game at home against Atlanta. Since then, he’s thrown one pick and completed 60.3 percent of his passes while the Jets won all four games, a very 2001 Bradyish showing.

Brady in 2001 was a lot better at Managing The Game than Sanchez has been this year. But so far in the postseason, Sanchez has played a lot more like Brady of 01 than Sanchez of 09.

COACH: Bill Belichick and Rex Ryan each made their bones as defensive assistants, and both preferred to win the game with a strong defense and a mistake-free offense. (Remember, we’re talking about 2001 Belichick here; 2009 Belichick tried to win games by copying CFL playbooks.) Their personalities could not be more different, which is so obvious it’s barely worth mentioning. Ryan is brash and publicly hyping his team; Belichick honed a glum persona while quietly stoking an us-against-the-world fervor.

While they both focus on defense, their philosophies about defense differ. Ryan likes to unleash blitz after blitz; Belichick wants sound, well-positioned defenders doing their job and clogging the right spot.

DEFENSE: The 2001 Patriots defense had loads of talent – Ty Law, Willie McGinest, Mike Vrabel, Tedy Bruschi, Lawyer Milloy, all more or less in their primes. Looking back, it’s surprising how statistically unremarkable that defense was. They allowed 17.0 points per game, which ranked sixth but was closer to the 21st ranked team (Broncos, 21.2) than the first-ranked team (Bears, 12.7). They ranked 24th in total defense, allowing 334.5. But you can see they had the potential to become dominant; in the final six games of the regular, they allowed 12.8 points per game. The defense was way, way better going into the playoffs than it was going into the regular season.

These Jets have been a force from the start of the year. They ranked first in total defense (allowing more than 30 yards per game less than the second-place Packers), first in points allowed (14.8 per game), first in passing yards allowed, and first in passing touchdowns allowed. Darrelle Revis is the best defensive player on Earth, no matter the trophy that rests on Charles Woodson’s mantle. He plays a lot like Law did, but better.

Those Patriots let their defense win games, but that defense allowed the opponent to come to them and then figured out a way to keep them from scoring. The Jets defense just overwhelmed opponents.

OFFENSE: As discussed above, the Patriots were better off with young Brady than the Jets are with rookie Sanchez. Neither team had star receivers, but the Patriots did have Troy Brown, who produced like a star. The Jets have a steady wideout in Jericho Cotchery and an enigma in Braylon Edwards. (The Patriots would have had an Edwardsian figure if they didn’t cut Terry Glenn midseason.) Tight end Dustin Keller is becoming an absolute weapon.

The Patriots preferred to run the ball, but they didn’t do it particularly well. They relied on Antowain Smith, an unspectacular workhorse, and gained 112.1 yards per game, 13th in the league. They ran as a means to grind the clock and control the game, and it worked, but, like their defense, they were not an overwhelming force when they ran the ball.

And, like their defense, the Jets are dominant when they run the ball. They led the league by gaining 172.3 rushing yards per game. Thomas Jones runs with speed and power, and Shonn Greene is a revelation. They not only control the clock. They blast away at a defense’s will.

Also, Damien Woody played for both offensive lines.

HOW THEY GOT THERE: The Patriots were 5-5 in midseason, a possible playoff team and still possibly a year away, at least, from breaking through. They had finished 5-11 the previous year; the verdict was not yet in on Bill Belichick, Head Coach. But by year’s end you could the Patriots becoming a great playoff team. They got hot at the end of the season and won six straight; they did everything at least serviceably; they knew how to control a game even if they weren’t dominating it; and, perhaps most essential, they did nothing poorly.

There were no signs that the Jets were about to turn it on when the playoffs began; they went from 7-7 to 9-7 while beating a pair of teams disinterested in winning. The signs they could become a great playoff team lay in their ability. Yes, they did a lot of things that can lose games over the course of the year. But their defense and their running game were blatantly great all along, and that combination gave them a chance to be dominant every time they stepped on the field.

Looking back at their statistics, it would be easy to ask how the heck that Patriots team finished 11-5 and earned a bye. With the Jets, the question is, how’d they ever go only 9-7 with all that talent?

Once they got in playoffs, the teams advanced in different ways. The Patriots only needed to win once to make the conference title game, and they won against the Raiders, ultimately, because Walt Coleman brought his A Game and Adam Vinatieri hit a 1-in-a-100 field goal. The Jets played on the road in the first round, and they pretty much dominated the Bengals. Then they dominated the Chargers for the second half. That’s not to dismiss the 2001 Patriots’ performance in the clutch, but to point out that they HAD to perform in the clutch. The Jets were able to salt away their first two games without much issue.

In the end, I guess it’s pretty obvious that I don’t think these Jets are a reincarnation of the 2001 Patriots. They have a young quarterback and a coach with a heavily defensive background. Those seem to be easy-to-spot cosmetic similarities heaped on top of fundamental differences.