It wasn’t as easy for the New York Jets in their second game with the Buffalo Bills, but the end result was the same. The Jets won a critical game and kept their playoff hopes alive. Led by Mark Sanchez and his career high four touchdown passes, the Jets escaped Sunday’s game with a win when Sanchez found Santonio Holmes for a 16-yard score with just over a minute left to keep the Jets in the thick of the AFC playoff race.

“He’s at his best in big moments,” coach Rex Ryan said. This was as big a moment as the Jets have had all season and with the win they now have only five more to go. The sentiment through the Jets locker room this week has been that they have to win in order to make it to the post season. It was looking like that was going to end with the first game when Dave Rayner hit a 53-yard field goal to put the Bills up 24-21.

Sanchez then led the Jets down the field, the key play coming on a third and 11 from the Bills 36 where Sanchez found Plaxico Burress along the sideline. Burress reached up and made an amazing one handed catch for 18 yards and the first down. ”It was crazy,” Jets cornerback Darrelle Revis said of the catch. “He’s 6-foot-5 and he’s got those ‘Go-Go-Gadget’ arms. It was probably one of the best catches I’ve seen in a while.”

Sanchez ran a sneak to assure there would be no challenge and then on the next play rolled out right and found Holmes in the end zone for the go ahead score. Though posting a career high in touchdown passes, Sanchez was far from great. He finished 17 of 35 for 180 yards and a pick, but when things mattered most, he prevailed.

His Bills counterpart, Ryan Fitzpatrick, bounced back from a streak of bad games to go 26 of 39 for 264 yards and three touchdowns, but couldn’t manage one more at the end. Fitzpatrick found a wide open Stevie Johnson, but Johnson dropped the pass. He also missed Johnson in the end zone as he threw behind him and the catch couldn’t be made.

Johnson made headlines for other reasons than just the dropped pass. He scored a touchdown late in the first half and to celebrate mocked shooting himself in the thigh, clearly a shot at Plaxico Burress who had accidentally shot himself in the leg in a nightclub in 2008 when he was with the Giants.

He then continued by mocking the “flight” celebration many of the Jets use after they score and fell to the ground which got a flag for 15 yards and ended up leading to the Jets tying the game back up 14-14. ”I was just having fun and part of having fun ended up being a penalty and a touchdown for the Jets,” Johnson said. “It was a stupid decision by myself.”

“I’ve seen worse, and I’ve heard worse,” Burress said of Johnson’s celebration. “So, it doesn’t bother me at all. The result I’m looking at is we won the football game.”

The Jets have won their first game and look to continue their streak for the playoffs as they head down to Washington to square off with quarterback troubled Redskins. The Bills, now losers of four straight games look to snap the streak as they head home to face Matt Hasselback and the Tennessee Titans.
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To Jets fans dismay, the Jets are showing a very consistent pattern of losing games. Three weeks — three losses. The Jets were handed another loss at the hands of their division arch-rivals, the New England Patriots, and they can only blame themselves. The Jets gave a lackluster performance with sporadic play from the offense yet again.

Even with the return of All-Pro C Nick Mangold, the Jets offense couldn’t get much of anything going against the league’s statistically worst defense. After all the talk this week about getting back to the ‘ground & pound’ that made the Jets the team we’ve come to know in the past two years, the first three drives ended with Sanchez dropping back on third and short.

Schottenheimer, who has been under a ton of scrutiny from the media recently — especially with the report surfacing that the Jets’ three big-name WRs complained to Rex Ryan about the play calling, didn’t help his case with some awful play calls throughout the game. The offense couldn’t do anything outside of one really good drive which featured Shonn Greene, 83 yards for the game, a season high.

The offense had seven, counting the seven three and outs and a horrendous three for 11 on third downs. Compare that with the Patriots going 7 for 14 on third downs and you can see why the Jets didn’t win this game. Mark Sanchez only had 70 yards through 3 quarters against the worst pass defense in the league.

This is twice in three games where Sanchez has been ineffective against bad secondaries. His numbers make his game appear a lot better than what was seen. He didn’t do a good job managing the team and it appears as if he’s regressed from the past two years which showed so much promise.

The defense, numbers aside, played a good game. They kept Tom Brady in check limiting him to a pedestrian 321 yards 1 touchdown and 1 interception. Wes Welker coming in as the league’s leading receiver had 124 yards, but 73 of those came on one play where Eric Smith bit badly on a play action fake leaving the field wide open over the top.

Revis was on him for most of the game so he was out of commission for the majority of the game. However, as everyone knows, defenses will wear down the longer they’re on the field and such was the case with the Jets who also surrendered 136 yards to BenJarvus Green-Ellis.

A big chunk of those yards came on a late game sustaining drive for the Patriots in which the Jets defense just couldn’t get off the field. A lot of miscommunications, some poor tackling and 8 penalties added to the Jets demise in Foxboro. Again the lone bright spot was Joe McKnight who’s proving he’s the real deal in the return game.

He had another 88 yard return and was solid in the return game all day. The Jets finish 0-3 on their road trip and return home to face the winless Dolphins on Monday night. While the Dolphins haven’t won this won’t be an easy win for the Jets as divisional games combined with their recent poor play doesn’t guarantee anything.

While this recent skid doesn’t bode well, the season isn’t lost quite yet, but one thing’s for sure if the Jets don’t turn it around quickly they won’t be making the playoffs much less the Super Bowl like Ryan so boldly predicted at the beginning of the season.

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