STEELERS 24, JETS 19: Jets Fall One Win
Short of the Super Bowl Again
Throughout this season, the
Jets reinforced their status as the most talkative team in football, a
boastful bunch who, with a series of last-second victories, backed up
their big talk.
Rashard Mendenhall rumbled through the Jets
for 121 yards on 27 carries. The Steelers took a 24-0 lead, then held
off a second-half rally by the Jets to earn their third Super Bowl trip
in six years.
But Sunday, the loudest team in football shuffled around its locker
room in silence, stunned, still processing a second straight Jets
season that reached the doorstep of the Super Bowl and ended there.
The
Pittsburgh Steelers had managed to complete what for most of this
season seemed impossible, had pushed the mute button on the Jets with a
24-19 triumph in the American Football Conference championship game. The
Jets trudged home, out of words. The Steelers will face the Green Bay
Packers in the Super Bowl on Feb. 6.
"I don't
even feel like the bridesmaid," linebacker Bart Scott said. "We're more
like the flower girl, I guess. We can't get past that last hurdle. It
hurts."
As Coach Rex Ryan stepped behind the
lectern for his postgame news conference, his expression -- red-faced
and teary-eyed -- said what the Jets struggled to convey.
The
Steelers will play for their second Super Bowl title in three years and
their third since the 2005 season. The Jets tacked another year onto
their own championship drought. Three times since 1998 they have
advanced to the game before the Super Bowl, which they last won after
the 1968 season. Three times their season has ended there, just as it
did Sunday night.
This year, the Jets had
insisted with increased frequency, felt different, was different. They
had not sneaked into the playoffs, as they did a year ago. They had
avenged previous grievances throughout January, beating the team that
finished their 2009 season (Indianapolis) and their most bitter rival
(New England).
On Sunday, the players said Ryan
addressed them with tears in his eyes. He told them he was proud of
them, told them they should be proud, too. His words, at least Sunday,
gave them little solace.
Several Jets said they
did not plan to watch the Super Bowl, not after another season in which
they came within the space between thumb and forefinger -- this close
-- from their stated goal.
"You know you have
the tools," offensive tackle D'Brickashaw Ferguson said. "You know you
have the talent and the team. You can say a lot of good things about us,
about our season, but at the end of the day, we lost."
SOURCE: The New York Times
Greg Bishop
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