11/17 – In his first news conference of the week leading up to the Jets' showdown with Tennessee, head coach Eric Mangini was greeted today with a question that seemed to imply his team needs to be afraid, very afraid of the 10-0 Titans.
"Their players were saying after their win over Jacksonville, 'We kind of have that feeling that we can't lose,' " a reporter framed his question. "Is that tough to go against or to plan for?"
Appropriately for a game to be played in six days in Music City, Mangini never missed a beat.
"You always want your guys to have the mentality that they can't lose — that's a really great spirit to have in any locker room," the coach said. "We go into every game with the assumption that we're going to win as well. That's what you're looking for in the locker room. It's a lot better than waiting for the other shoe to drop in any given game: 'Things are going well but what else is going to happen?' "
Asked for his theories about why coach Jeff Fisher's Titans have opened the season so perfectly, Mangini proposed:
"I think they play complementary football and they're talented in all three phases. They're well-coached. They score a lot of points in the second quarter and the fourth quarter, which makes you believe they're very well-conditioned. They don't make a lot of mistakes. They haven't turned the ball over on offense and they've generated a lot of turnovers on defense. That goes a long way to winning and losing."
All those attributes are certainly true for Tennessee. Many are also true for the Jets.
Mangini has preached complementary football and offense, defense and special teams being able to contribute every week.
Talk of scoring well in the even quarters? The Jets lead the NFL (before tonight's Buffalo-Cleveland game) in second-quarter points scored (104) and are third in fourth-quarter points scored (84).
In fact, this game could be a referendum of sorts for the teams playing the best halves in football through the NFL's first 11 weeks. Here are the league's top five in best point margin in any half:
Team
Half
PF
PA
Margin
JETS
1st
175
95
plus-80
Tennessee
2nd
130
54
plus-76
Giants
1st
167
93
plus-74
Atlanta
1st
144
85
plus-59
San Diego
2nd
142
86
plus-57
And while their own giveaways and takeaways have had their ups and downs, the Jets' 19 takes are fifth in the league and they have a plus-7 margin their past three games. (They're plus-1 for the season.) Meanwhile, Tennessee has an NFL-leading plus-10 margin and not surprisingly are the only team that has not had a minus turnover margin in any game all season.
Mangini declined to accept the premise that Kerry Collins is a different QB now, more of a "game manager," than he used to be in his Carolina and Giants incarnations.
"I don't think that ability has changed one bit," he said. "You saw yesterday a couple of deeper balls there in the second half. He's always had that capability. He can hurt you with that at any point. It's not a function of him not being able to do that. Maybe they've called for a different approach based on whoever they're playing. That's a good sign, whenever you win the way you need to win that week."
One more point of interest in the news conference was the coach's point of view on Ty Law's participation against the Patriots. It was pretty good, he said, "considering how long ago it was since he played a game.
"He had to play more reps than we had anticipated, with different things came up on the sideline where guys had to come out for a little bit. I thought he did a nice job stepping in and competing. Even on the touchdown pass, it was a well-thrown ball and an incredible catch, not much space that Ty left there for Randy [Moss] and [Matt] Cassel to work, but they got it where they needed to and he made a great catch."
Speaking about work, Mangini was asked about the availability of LB David Harris for the Titans, the coach's response wasn't optimistic but neither was it pessimistic.
"We'll have to see how that goes," he said. "David, Eric Smith and Bubba [Franks] are all making progress. We'll just take it as we go. They'll be working out here today and tomorrow. We'll see where they are on Wednesday."
