Here Come The Warm Jets: Week 1 2009

Anyone else see that coming?

I mean, sure, it wasn't unreasonable to pick the Jets to win this game. Houston is improving, but they're not an elite team by any means.

But did anyone see the Jets just flat-out dominating them like that?

Make no mistake, this was about as dominating a win as the Jets have ever had. I could even tell that trying to watch the game while there were forty of my relatives at my parents' house.

How dominating? All you need to know are these numbers:

# of points scored by the Houston offense: 0
Yards gained by the Jets offense vs gained by the Houston offense: 462 - 183
Turnovers by Mark Sanchez: 1
Sacks of Mark Sanchez: 0

The defense was outstanding. They were aggressive, they were mean, and they stole the will of the Texans early on. In the first series, Bart Scott hit Matt Schaub really hard right as he threw it. That set the tone. David Harris was terrorizing anyone on Houston that thought about trying to gain some yards. Kris Jenkins owned the middle. Darrelle Revis completely eliminated Andre Johnson from the game, and he's one of the top receivers in football.

This is what we hoped the defense would look like under Rex Ryan. Hard hitting, aggressive, intimidating, and fun to watch.

The offense was solid if unspectacular. The running game wasn't great in the early part of the game, but by the second half they wore the Texans down (see: Thomas Jones' 38-yard TD late in the game.) Cotchery and Stuckey did some great things, especially after the catch. Dustin Keller was a potent threat.

And Sanchez looked good. Nothing really to complain about, given he's a young rookie starting his first NFL game, on the road.

So, yeah, this win feels good. Really good. Startlingly good.

That said: one game does not a season make.

We don't have to go back too far in Jets history to know that. Just think about the difference last year between the Tennessee game (dominating win - are we the best team in the AFC?) and the Denver game (holy crap this team blows) which were only one week apart.

Which means there is no need to get too far ahead of ourselves. This game was very promising. Now let's see if it can continue.

The questions to ponder going into next weekend's game against the Pats:

- Can Darrelle Revis do to Randy Moss what he did to Andre Johnson?
- Can the linebackers disrupt Tom Brady's rhythm?
- Can Kris Jenkins dominate the middle every game as he did in this one?
- Will the Jets be able to run the ball consistently against a better defense like the Pats have?
- Can they reduce the number of third and longs? (they had too many of them in this game, and while Sanchez was excellent on these in this game, you can't count on that happening all the time.)
- Can they reduce the number of penalties (10 for 80 yards in this game = not good at all, also, see above about third and longs)?
- Can Sanchez continue to not turn the ball over very much?
- Can Rex Ryan fire the team up every week as well as he did this week, or, how do teams that use emotion like this handle the dog days of the schedule?

Ah, you know, what? Let's stop with all the questions, and just savor the moment. We can fire up the pessimism-mobile after the Pats game, if we have to.

The Jets, for one day, looked as good as any team in the NFL. That's good enough for the early part of the first week of the season.