Murderer's Row

Peyton Manning. Tom Brady. Ben Roethlisberger.  Those are three Super Bowl winning, future Hall of Fame quarterbacks.

The Colts, Patriots and Steelers. Those are the winners of the past seven AFC championships.

The Jets’ road to Dallas and backing up Rex Ryan’s big talk faces that murderer’s row. This isn’t last year. There’s no easy game in these playoffs for the Jets. There’s no Bengals, who the Jets crushed in Week 17, awaiting the next weekend in the Wild Card Round. There’s no potential Divisional round matchup with a team notorious for playoff chokes.

Instead, these playoffs see an AFC Championship rematch in the Wild Card round. If they get through that it’s off to Foxboro, a matchup with the moxie and legacy of Belichick and Brady.

And then finally, it could be a trip to Pittsburgh, Baltimore or (though highly unlikely) Kansas City just to get to the Big Game.

It’s not baseball or the ’27 Yanks but this is a murderer’s row just as imposing. And maybe it’s what the Jets need.

After a season that has at times seemed to be more populated with controversies than offensive touchdowns, the Jets have something to prove. They were the self-proclaimed favorites going into this season. At one point, they were atop the division and looking like they might back up all the hype. Maybe Ryan’s Jets were the AFC’s best, as he told us all offseason.

Then came week 13, Monday Night Football, 9-2 Jets vs. 9-2 Patriots. The night the Jets lost their swagger. In their most important game of the season, the Jets didn’t just lose. They got crushed, embarrassed in front of a national audience. That night the Patriots regained their mantra of NFL’s best and the Jets were once again relegated to second-class status.

In one game, everything changed. The Jets finished their season 2-2 and as the sixth seed. The Patriots finished theirs 4-0 and with home field throughout.

But none of that matters now. It’s up to the Jets to rediscover the gameplans that carried them a half away from a Super Bowl berth in Miami last season. It is possible. They showed it in Pittsburgh.

Murderer’s row is going to be a challenge.  Those quarterback legends loom large in the way. But at one point Tom Brady was the underdog against the Greatest Show on Turf, Peyton Manning was the great quarterback that couldn’t get it done in the big game and Ben Roethlisberger was just a byproduct of his run game and defense. You shed those labels, become a legend, by what you do in January and February. Now it’s Mark Sanchez’s turn, to build his playoff legend or have one of those dastardly labels.