October 21st at Patriots (26-29)

I'm getting tired of writing about losses. Overall though, this was a dramatic game that really proved two things. #1: The Jets are not a doormat, and will certainly not go down without a serious effort. #2: The Patriots aren't exactly the juggernaut that they used to be.

The Jets scored a touchdown on their opening drive. The celebration was short-lived however, when the Patriots returned the following kick-off for a touchdown of their own. They slowly built up a lead and by the end of the third quarter, we were looking at a 13-23 deficit. At that moment, my Mom finished cooking dinner, so I ended up missing most of the last quarter (but the steak was delicious). I came back to find out that clutch Mark Sanchez does in fact still exist, as the game was now tied at 23-23 with a little over two minutes to go.

We again marched down the field and finally took the lead back with 90 seconds to go. Unfortunately giving Tom Brady that much time rarely turns out well, as was the case here. The Pats kicked the tying field goal as time expired to send the game into overtime and my nerves into a panic again.

The Pats received the ball first and got a field goal out of the drive. With the new overtime rules, we then had the next possession to either get a field goal to keep overtime going or a touchdown for the win. Starting from way back, we mounted a descent drive until, well, this happened: http://www.patriots.com/media-center/videos/WK-7-Cant-Miss-Play-Rob-Ninkovich-sinks-New-York-Jets/fec80350-9259-4483-b7db-ab316c4998d0 (Yes, I had to go to the Patriots' website to get that link, something I'm not exactly proud of.)

If that never happened and we kept marching, we may have won this game and there would have been a much better feeling to it. But alas, no such luck. I think we could get a little better with errors; there were a few that prevented us from taking the lead early on. I think that now, after close losses to the Texans and Patriots, we've proven that we can hold our own against good teams. In the meantime though, let's go get the win over the Dolphins next week.