There's a distinction this time — a very good distinction, a painful distinction, an anxious distinction, a satisfying distinction. Possibly you didn’t sleep fairly as late as you usually would have, as a result of sitting within the fast recess of your mind was what's going to start simply after 1 o’clock. It has been some time because it has felt fairly this manner.
Soccer is completely different from different sports activities exactly as a result of it permits for days like this. Within the different sports activities, in the event you enable your self to get too labored up about one sport, and that sport doesn’t have the flexibility to finish your season, you’ll wind up in a straitjacket earlier than too lengthy. In soccer, it’s all that you really want.
You desire a Sunday that issues.
You desire a 1 o’clock with that means.
The Jets’ season gained’t finish Sunday afternoon, even when all the things goes sideways in Orchard Park, N.Y., even when the Payments batter the Jets for 3 hours and the Jets stroll off the sector having been shifted from the “safely in” to the “within the hunt” column of the playoff image. So the stakes aren’t important.
However, man. For the primary time in an extended, very long time, it looks like a sport that can toy together with your feelings on each snap in case your chosen colours are inexperienced and white and your workforce of alternative is the Jets, 7 wins and 5 losses on the season, making an attempt to make an announcement that will be loud sufficient to be heard in each precinct of the NFL.
“It’s a division sport, so it’s all the time going to be a bear to play a division opponent,” head coach Robert Saleh mentioned this week. “Offensively, I really feel like they’re fairly wholesome, they had been wholesome again then, they're now. It’s going to be a problem, to play a division opponent twice, it’s arduous. It’s arduous since you’re making an attempt to give you schemes that preserve them on their heels, however on the similar time there’s a stability, by way of the way you do issues.
“However they’re uber-talented, they’re on 10 days’ relaxation, taking part in at dwelling. It’s an amazing alternative, big-time division sport, so it’s going to be enjoyable.”
Enjoyable taking part in the sport, perhaps. Enjoyable teaching the sport.
However watching? As a completely invested fan? Yeah. That can both be torture or bliss, nothing in between. There was a few of that final week, for Jets followers hoping the workforce would stroll into Minneapolis and topple the Vikings. Bliss truly appeared attainable till the Vikings blitzed bliss 36 inches away from the top zone.
Nonetheless, that was a non-conference foe. It was per week earlier within the calendar.
That is completely different. That is the Payments, a workforce towards which the Jets’ historical past stretches, actually, again to the start — a 27-3 win for the then-Titans over the Payments on the Polo Grounds on Sept. 11, 1960, the primary sport within the historical past of each groups. That is the Payments, which the Jets shocked 5 weeks in the past, sending the presumptive Tremendous Bowl favorites into a short disaster.
That is Buffalo, a metropolis starved for a championship after 57 years with out one, a city that loves its soccer workforce with extra fervor and extra fury than simply about some other. That is Buffalo, with an 80 % probability of rain within the forecast, with a fan base that has been salivating for revenge, has an insatiable urge for food for video games like this and hasn’t seen the Payments play a house sport in nearly a month.
However these are the Jets, and 5 weeks in the past when they diminished Josh Allen to a puddle at MetLife Stadium, they formally introduced themselves as legit. They nonetheless consider they're legit, and falling a number of factors shy at Minnesota final week didn’t alter that perception. They've supplied their correct respect for the Payments. However additionally they know what a win Sunday will imply.
“I feel it’s going to be a extremely good take a look at for the workforce,” Jets quarterback Mike White mentioned. “It’s clearly a really powerful place to play. It’s an excellent workforce. They’re rolling proper now, so it’s going to be a battle. I’m trying ahead to it.”
And why not? So many comparable Sundays these previous few years have been excursions via the Crimson Zone Channel for Jets followers, on the lookout for video games that matter, all the time someplace else. Not this time. Not this Sunday. Little doubt the place you’ll be simply after 1 o’clock. Nowhere you’d somewhat be, both.
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