I’m going to let you in on a little secret. That team Rex Ryan is always touting and raving about, the one that bullies people on the ground and assaults opposing quarterbacks and batters opponents into submission? It exists. Only not in Buffalo. It’s all happening in New York, with the Jets, the very team Ryan left. And worse yet for Rex, the team he has in Buffalo looks increasingly more like the mess of an outfit he ended his Jets career with a year ago.
These two teams continue to trend in very different directions, with the Jets a Brandon Marshall lateral from possibly being undefeated and the Bills continuing to fall prey to silly penalties and slow starts and a quarterback carousel and curious personnel decisions. The defense makes very few plays and gets after few quarterbacks, despite having like $60M tied up in its defensive line. They aren’t scaring anyone.
Buffalo has already lost three games at home and plays four of the next five on the road, including consecutive road games at the Jets and Patriots. A long trip to London after Sunday’s debacle with the Bengals -- it wasn’t as close as the score might indicate -- only compounds the mounting list of medical issues, with Tyrod Taylor still iffy and Sammy Watkins and Kyle Williams joining the likes of Percy Harvin and Karlos Williams on the injured list.
As for those Jets, they’re going to hang around all season and I like them to grab a wild card spot, frankly. If Ryan Fitzpatrick can just limit the multiple-turnover games, they have every chance to be a factor. Chris Ivory has added outside explosiveness in the screen game to go with his already established hard-nosed attack between the tackles (I’d be exploring a short-term contract extension with him ASAP if I were in that front office).
Brandon Marshall is playing his best football in years. That defense is downright beastly, and, after facing the Patriots next week, the Jets get a potentially favorable run of AFC games (Raiders, Jags, Bills, Texans, Dolphins). They manage to keep this equation going, and they’ll be humming come December. But it’ll be a quiet hum. That much I know.
The Jets do all of their talk on Sundays now. And lately they’d been speaking very loudly.
