The Jets Talk About the Patriots

The New York Jets talked about the New England Patriots today…

Nick Mangold

On how the team’s current confidence level compares to what it was last time against New England…
We’re doing pretty good, a couple of good wins. Plenty of room to improve, but I think guys are excited about the opportunity.

On what the team’s biggest improvement has been…
Execution. We’re hitting our assignments pretty well, techniques, too, pretty well. I know that’s been a big help to this success.

Jim Leonhard

On what this week is like knowing they are tied for first in the AFC East…
We’ve known all along that it’s going to come down to November and December. We had our rough patch earlier this year, but we came out of it and now everything’s in front of us. We know we need to play well. They are who they are. They’re a great football team and we need to come out and play well.

On whether he is shocked that New England has lost two games in a row…
It happens. They’re not invincible. They’re a great football team, but they’ve got beat by some pretty good teams, as well. I don’t think they’re going to panic up in New England, and we’re not going to feel sorry for them, either.

On playing back-to-back primetime games in a short period of time…
You can’t worry about the second one. It’s going to come, whether we’re ready or not. You have to take care of this first one and do whatever you can to physically get your body back for that second one. New England’s tough enough to prepare for when you’re not worried about anything else. You have to block everything out and just take care of business.

On whether they will pay extra attention to how the Steelers and Giants defeated the Patriots…
You’re going to look at the whole body of work. It’s going to be a tough game, and we’re excited for the challenge.

Rex Ryan

On using Joe McKnight in the wildcat instead of Jeremy Kerley…
Well we can use three different guys. That was my play, that was terrible. (smiling) Like Mike Pettine said, “Rex, why don’t you stick to putting in defensive calls instead of these offensive ones.” (McKnight) wasn’t supposed to reverse his field, we thought it was going out the one side. (The wildcat) is something that you want to give different looks and it’s something that we can do and we have three different guys who can do it, so let’s face it, we’re featuring it this week against New England. (laughter)

On if the coaching staff began thinking about New England once the game was over like players said they were…
Yes, no doubt.  Obviously, there is satisfaction in the fact that we accomplished our mission for that week and that was to get a victory against a good Buffalo team at their place, so that was a good win for us.  Again, we almost looked at this, we put it in a four-game area to see how this division is going to lay out, so that was just step one.

On if he would have imagined a month ago that they would be in a tie with New England and Buffalo atop the division…
The big thing is we weren’t worried about anybody else, but ourselves.  Certainly, we’ll take it, the fact that Pittsburgh and the Giants have beaten New England, we’ll definitely take that.  We had to get better as a football team and I think we have gotten better.  We’ll see if we’ve gotten substantially better by the way we play this game on Sunday.  I believe we have gotten substantially better, but again, the proof is going to be in the pudding.