12/08 — To be sure, there were enough mistakes to go around in Sunday's tough-to-take 24-14 loss to the San Francisco 49ers.

Head coach Eric Mangini was asked today at his day-after news conference if he was unhappy with the attitude and effort of his team. He didn't buy the premise of the question and instead replied that all the people in football ops need to check the mirror every day for the rest of the season as long as it lasts, including him and his coaching staff.

"I'm not by any stretch of the imagination not taking accountability for where we are," Mangini said. "We need to do a better job as a coaching staff. Obviously, we need to improve the things we're doing in terms of how we're attacking, how we're defending, how we convey that information. It's a collective effort. When we win, it's a collective effort, when we lose, it's a collective effort. Everybody needs to improve."

How that will shake out this week will have to be observed in Sunday's Fan Appreciation Day home game against Buffalo. But this is not a magic bullet week. Mangini, his coaches and players know what they have to do to lift the "funk," in Thomas Jones' word, from this stretch run and that's to win one game at a time, meaning the Bills.

Funny how perceptions change. Newsday's Bob Glauber asked Mangini the proverbial "If you were told in September that after Week 14 you'd be 8-5 and tied for the top in the division, that wouldn't be such a bad deal."

But Mangini wasn't sugarcoating the Green & White position, so typical for many NFL teams this time of year — you're "in control of your destiny" by winning out, but one loss could mean you're in control only of, as Floridian David Bowens put it, setting up your barbecue back home in January because you're not in the playoffs.

"It goes in waves throughout the season," Mangini said. " 'This is a must-win,' 'you're heading to the Super Bowl,' 'you can't win a game.' It's all over the place — and it's always going to be like that, year in and year out. You can't let that come into your consciousness, because when you do, it skews what you should be focused on."

Mangini is doing his part by breaking out the visual aids. At today's team meeting he showed an outline of where this year's team has been just to get to this point.

"I think it's been 267 days since off-season workouts began," he said. "You look at it comparatively, to get to the point where we are, it's a long, long road. Any kind of distraction, any kind of bump or bruise, any of that stuff, is really so small in the grand scheme of things as you look at our body of work."

One other coaching option he's considering — which he has to consider now, considering the logistics, even though it's a game ahead — is leaving for Seattle a week from Saturday, not a week from Friday.

"Yeah, there's a good chance," he said of the change of routine that the Jets have used for their three West Coast trips already this season, which have resulted in three losses. "It's definitely been talked about."

But all other talk this week will be about Buffalo and about how individuals and units and the team itself can improve its performance over the last two weeks.

"That's what we ask the team each and every week, win or lose," Mangini said. "Look at yourself in the mirror, evaluate everything you've done. Can you improve it? How can you improve it? How can you help us win moving forward? And that's not just the players but the coaches as well."

Whatever happens the rest of this season, it will be a team effort.

Special Issues

The Jets were close to breaking two nice returns. One we know about: Leon Washington's 99-yard kickoff return that almost gave the Jets a 21-17 fourth-quarter lead that was converted into a 39-yard return minus a 10-yard hold on James Ihedigbo.

Mangini was asked about the flag thrown by Ed Hochuli's crew for a second day. "There's nothing I can do about it," he said. "It was called. That was their decision."

The other chance didn't look too good, but in case you were wondering, Brad Smith's errant lateral that Washington had to save at the Jets 1 was a planned and practiced play, not a split-second decision by Smith.

"We were coming back with the option. It just was not very good execution on the option part," Mangini said. "We had a great opportunity if we'd been able to convert on that. [The coverage] looked exactly like what we'd been doing, knowing that there was just one contain defender on the backside. We thought we had a really good opportunity. Not only did we miss it but we put the ball on the minus-1."

As for the special teams penalties, you can make of it what you will. The Jets had been flagged for only five ST penalties in the first 12 games, only one in the last six games before Sunday. Then against the Niners, the Jets were hit with three penalties for 28 yards.

"Inside the Jets"

Tonight's 1050 AM ESPN radio show from Charlie Brown's restaurant in Chatham, N.J., will feature Washington — for his second appearance on the show — and QB Brett Ratliff. But yours truly is scheduled to make his third appearance, staying one ahead of Neon Leon. Representing the Jets Flight Crew at tonight's proceedings: Danielle B. and Alyssa. The show kicks off at 7 p.m.