EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- All week, Rex Ryan looked for the warning signs.
A blown assignment. A half-hearted effort on a play. A stumble here. A bumble there. Anything that would indicate the slightest lack of focus on the part of his New York Jets as they prepared for Sunday's game against the Tennessee Titans.
Ryan knew, sooner or later, he'd see it, because the Jets had expended so much, physically and emotionally, to end the Meadowlands curse of the New England Patriotsthe week before. With the winless Titans coming to town, it was practically a given the Jets wouldn't have optimum concentration. And in Thursday's practice, Ryan found what he was looking for. His players were sloppy, especially on defense, and the coach let them know about it with some choice expletives that got the attention of everyone on the unit.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly how much of a direct correlation there was between that and Sunday's 24-17 victory over Tennessee, but it does say plenty about Ryan. It says that the buttons he has been pushing in the Jets' first 3-0 start since 2004 aren't limited to defensive strategy, his area of expertise. It says, after three official games on the job, he just might know what he's doing as a head coach, beyond making inflammatory comments about the opposition or imploring the hometown fans to make a lot of noise when the other team has the ball, as he did leading up to the New England game.
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"When it's a hard-fought game and you have the big, emotional win, it does take a lot to bounce back and get the energy going for the next week," Jets nose tackle Kris Jenkins said. "So that's a very big shout-out to our coaches -- not just Rex but our other coaches as well -- just to know what we need at a certain time to get after us.
"We might not always understand what's going on. We might think everything is fine. We might think everything is going good. I'm a defensive lineman, so sometimes what happens in practice with the linebackers, the DBs or the offense, I don't know necessarily what's going on. For the coach to step up and say, 'Hey, look ...' it just kind of clicks the light bulb. We take it for what it is, accept the criticism, and then just keep working to make ourselves better."
That's what good teams do. The Jets are a good team.
Sure, they have their flaws, and those hometown fans let them know about it by booing their poor showing in the second quarter ("I was booing myself," Ryan joked afterward). But is there another club among the NFL's unbeatens that doesn't?
Mark Sanchez, the Jets' quarterback, looks unstoppable on some plays, and on others he looks, well, like the rookie he is. He can sometimes be careless when it comes to protecting the ball, as he demonstrated with a fumble that set up the first touchdown the Jets have allowed this season. He occasionally makes reckless throws, as he did on a fourth-quarter interception in Titans' territory with 6:22 left and the Jets going from delivering a potential knockout blow to dangerously allowing the Titans to hang around a little longer.
But Sanchez also is capable of throwing touchdown passes, such as the two he had against the Titans, and making gutsy scoring runs, such as the one he had against Tennessee that ended with a head-first collision with safety Michael Griffin as he crossed the goal line.
"He might want to juke a little bit, save the skull," center Nick Mangold said of his young quarterback. "But it's good to see that passion and intensity to get in the end zone."
That's a big part of what all of the Jets share -- a constant drive to excel, to overcome themselves while overcoming the opponent.
The Titans are 0-3, and perhaps they've already killed their chances of assuming their usual place as a serious postseason contender. Yet, they played extremely hard Sunday. They just didn't always play smart. Kerry Collins threw two interceptions and Ryan Mouton fumbled a kickoff to set up the Jets' second touchdown and muffed a punt to set up their third.
"The irony about (Sunday) is that our message all week was to protect the football," Titans coach Jeff Fisher said. "I guess I have to take responsibility for this one. When you turn the ball over twice on special teams, it's hard to win ballgames, especially against a team like this."
Fisher is universally regarded as one of the very best coaches in the NFL, and neither Sunday's performance nor the Titans' 0-3 start changes that. However, his failure to make a critical connection with his players during their week of preparation further underscores the importance of what Ryan did on Thursday.
He brought practice to a screeching halt. Then, he started screeching about errors he noticed on defense. Although it might not have been readily apparent to the players on the field, Ryan saw what he perceived as a disconnect between the defensive game plan that had been installed and what was being executed. In so many words (none of which will be repeated here), he told his players, "This ... is ... not ... going ... to ... happen!"
"Whether it was maybe little calls that we were not getting or whatever, the coaches want us to have great communication, and it wasn't up to their standards," linebacker Jason Trusnik said. "We just came back, and on Friday we had a great practice, and we were ready to play."
Would the Jets still have won the game had there been no blowup on Thursday? Perhaps.
But with the competitive margin as close as it is in the NFL, a coach's greatest weekly challenge -- beyond coming up with the proper Xs and Os -- is to keep his players focused. So far, Ryan seems to be doing pretty well in that department.
