10/04 — The Saints scored 24 points Sunday to knock the Jets from the ranks of the unbeaten, but their prolific offense accounted for 10. That was a touchdown too many for Jets head coach Rex Ryan.

“We should have held them to three points,” he said after watching his team drop to 3-1.

If you were told before this contest that the Jets would limit Drew Brees to just 10 points, you’d sign up for it and get the victory cigar ready. And yet despite holding the Saints to just a point a possession (10 points, 10 drives), the Jets had nothing to show for their valiant effort against a team that was averaging 40 points per contest.

The Saints got a John Carney 34-yard field goal on their first drive and then nothing from their offense on the scoreboard until the fourth quarter. Drew Brees, who completed 20 of 32 passes for 190 yards, was touchdown- and error-free. And that was the difference in a game in which the Jets' rookie quarterback accounted for four turnovers.

The Saints looked poised to make it a runaway and take a 17-0 advantage midway through the second. Brees completed a sceen pass to Pierre Thomas and some sloppy tackling resulted in a 36-yard gain and a first-and-goal at the Jets 1. But Thomas lost a yard on first down, FB Heath Thomas was held to a yard on second down, and Brees threw consecutive incompletions on third and fourth downs.

“We have the philosophy that they’re not in until they’re in,” said ILB Bart Scott. “They did a great job getting down there, but we believe that we play every play like it’s our last. All you have to do is win that particular down and then when that down’s over, you win the next down. So we were able to get the stop.”

But the “D” didn’t have good fortune on its side. Two plays after the goal line stand, Will Smith stripped Sanchez of the ball in the end zone and Remi Ayodele recovered for a score. The Jets went down 17 as both of Sanchez’s first-half turnovers — the other was a Darren Sharper 99-yard interception return — directly resulted in 14 points.

“I thought we had a nice goal-line stand on them,” Ryan said. “Our guys never quit. They earned what they got.”

Playing behind all day, the Jets didn’t get to blitz as much as they would have liked. Brees was hurried on occasion but never sacked and remained cool in the pocket.

“They were in control of the game more than we were in control of it,” Ryan said. “That will sometimes take away from it. You have to defend against the run a little bit more than you really wanted to.”

“The blitz, he was beating it,” added DE Shaun Ellis of Brees. “We weren’t getting many hits on him and they ran the ball on pass situations. They kept us off balance.”

The Jets never went away, though, as both ILB David Harris (12 tackles, including 10 solo stops, and one forced fumble) and CB Darrelle Revis (three tackles, two passes defended) delivered outstanding individual efforts again. Bryan Thomas’ strip of Reggie Bush resulted in a Dwight Lowery recovery, which would set up the Jets' only touchdown, a 15-yard Thomas Jones run in the third that cut the gap to just 17-10.

And the score remained that way until Pierre Thomas salted the game away in the fourth quarter with a 1-yard run. It was only the third touchdown the Jets allowed on 46 offensive possessions in the season’s first quarter and it was an uncharacteristic 11 plays allowed by the Green & White. 

On third-and-6 from the Saints' 30, Brees found a wide-open David Thomas for a critical 18-yard gain.

“I got a little too aggressive and lost my footing and gave up a big play,” Scott said. “I’ll be better next time and I’ll learn from this experience, and I’ll make that play.”

Four plays later, NT Kris Jenkins jumped offside on fourth-and-1 from the Jets 43.

"I made a mistake. My intentions were good,” Big Jenks said. “I was trying to knock the center back and they caught me offsides. It hurts to have to talk about it. You never want to feel that something you did contributed to your team losing. But I have to be a man and accept the reality of the situation.”

Then on a critical third-and-4, Brees went to Robert Meachem on a slant for 19 yards. Thomas, who rushed for 86 yards, finished it.

“We did our part to not win the game as well,” said S Kerry Rhodes, credited with eight stops. “We did not stop the run down the stretch and we couldn’t get the ball back at the end. It was a complete loss.”

The Jets won’t be happy about giving up 153 yards on the ground as the Saints exploited them at times with cutbacks. But for a team missing three starters (Calvin Pace will return from suspension next week and No. 2 corner Lito Sheppard and nickel corner Donald Strickland were both down with injuries), this Jets defense turned in a quality effort vs. the NFL’s best offense.

“This team is not going to get off course. Period,” Scott said. “You’re not going to see this team get off the bandwagon. We believe in the man leading us, we believe in the system, we believe in the scheme and we believe in each other. Honestly, we thought we were going to go undefeated. That’s not the case, but the next thing you do is you try and go 15-1.”