The Jets offense had their hands full with a relentless Bears defense – but they weren’t alone. The Jets defense stepped up to the challenge and went blow-for-blow with the best defense in the National Football League.
Defensive coordinator Bob Sutton’s unit entered the weekend as the 31st ranked defense in the NFL, but they ignored that placement against Chicago. Head coach Lovie Smith’s Bears were coming off of a 38-point outburst a week ago here at the Meadowlands against the Giants and they had averaged more than 330 yards per game this season. Perhaps such gaudy numbers distracted Bears quarterback Rex Grossman as the former Florida Gator came up empty-handed in the first 30 minutes of action.
“We come into every game thinking we can win and compete,” said safety Kerry Rhodes. “We came in this game and nothing changed. It was pretty much going along with the game plan. We kept fighting and they made a couple more plays than we did. So you have to give it up to them too.”
The Jets held Grossman to a paltry -1 passing yards in the first half and contained the rest of the Bears offense to zero points and just 80 combined yards (81 rushing). Running back Thomas Jones kept the Chicago offense alive with 55 first half yards and broke out with 66 more in the second half to lead all rushers with 121 yards. Despite Jones’ performance, the Jets defense harnessed the Bears offense while limiting Grossman to one of his worst statistical performances with just 11 completions and 119 yards.
In that seesaw first half scuffle, Jets linebacker Victor Hobson led the Green and White with four tackles and would eventually finish the day tied with Jonathan Vilma for a team-high nine tackles. Rhodes not only added eight stops of his own, the second-year starter came up with yet another one of his patented blind-sided sacks for an eight-yard loss with 4:41 left before the intermission.
“We know they are the number one defense in the league,” Rhodes said. “They came and did what they had to do. We played good as a unit for the most part.”
One of the bigger contributors to the field position game was punter Ben Graham as he kept the Bears arsenal at bay, averaging 50.8 yards on four first half punts. The Aussie native finished the afternoon with seven punts for a 44.3-yard average including a career-high 67 yard boot with less than two minutes to go in the second quarter.
“It is a team effort,” said head coach Eric Mangini. “On special teams, I thought Ben and the whole punt team did a really nice job against an excellent returner. The Bears are a good team. I was proud of the way we fought; we just need to execute better.”
The Bears were only able to get inside the red zone once all afternoon and it came following an onside kick attempt by the Jets to open the second half. Starting at the Jets’ 44, Grossman handed the ball off seven consecutive times to Jones for a total of 44 yards. The Bears found themselves at first-and-goal from the Jets four-yard line, but the defense stepped up on three consecutive Jones runs, including a combined stop by Erik Coleman and Vilma on third and goal from the two.
“It was encouraging for us. We knew we could hold them; it wasn’t a surprise we’ve been doing that all year,” Vilma said. “Holding them to three was good for us – it helped us out.”
The Bears then struck again in the opening seconds of the fourth quarter as Grossman hit receiver Mark Bradley along the right sideline for a 57-yard touchdown and a 10-point lead. Even on the game’s only touchdown, the Bears offense caught a break as rookie cornerback Drew Coleman slipped on the fieldturf, allowing Bradley a free trip to the end zone.
“I wasn’t aggressive on him, so I just kind of played off of him and made sure I didn’t get out-leveraged. When I got outside of him, I happened to slip and he just went straight up the field,” Coleman said. “We played good. We probably had a couple bad breaks here and there, but you take away the long pass and anything could have happened.”
Coleman was busy blitzing Grossman on that play – something the Jets had been doing so successfully all afternoon.
“It was a max pressure,” Mangini said of the touchdown play. “That is what we talk about every week. Somebody’s band is going to play on that, and unfortunately on that play it was theirs. When you blitz and take chances you have to be able to make those tackles on the perimeter.”
Although there are no moral victories in the NFL, the Jets defense stepped up and nearly outlasted the best in the league. Vilma and the rest of the Jets expected such a dog-fight and will take what they learned into next week’s battle with the Texans.
“It is frustrating but that’s what you expect in a game like this. We knew it was going to be a close game. Every play, every effort was important,” Vilma said. “It is not going to be a riot game, especially when you have a good defense. They have a good defense for a reason, and we were keeping up with them obviously. We did a good job ourselves and one play was going to change it.”
