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The Jets have won one Super Bowl, and that came three months before Tom Brady’s parents were married in 1969, and eight years before Tom Brady was born in 1977.
For the Jets, Tom Brady is mercifully no longer in the AFC East. But that guy wearing No. 12 in a Tampa Bay Bucs uniform on Sunday at MetLife Stadium?
That’s him, all right.
That’s Tom Brady — seven-time Super Bowl champion, the only quarterback Father Time can’t intercept. That’s Tom Brady, trying to capture the No. 1 seed in the NFC.
If Tom Brady is the Man in the Arena, then Zach Wilson is the Boy in the Arena.
The Jets are dying to shock Tom Brady — and the world — with their latest rookie head coach, Robert Saleh, and their latest rookie quarterback, in their latest rebuilding program.
The Jets are 4-11 and they won’t be playing in a Super Bowl for the 53rd consecutive year. Saleh and Wilson and all the young impressionable Jets that flood the roster very well might be watching Brady hoist his historic eighth Lombardi Trophy.
That wouldn’t be until Feb. 13 at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif.
Attn: New York Jets:
Jan. 3 at MetLife Stadium?
Make this your Super Sunday.
“Funny you say that,” rookie safety Jason Pinnock told The Post. “This last quarter of the season we’ve kinda had that mentality, that every game was a Super Bowl for us, so to be honest, it’s just a greater challenge, and we’re looking forward to it for such a young team to finally have that big challenge. But we’ve been looking at every game like that already so for us mentality-wise as far as us in the room and organization, it’s no different.
“This is our Super Bowl.”
There can be no better way possible to start the New Year than by upsetting the GOAT and the defending Super Bowl champs.
No better way possible to start believing in earnest that there is a path to a better and brighter tomorrow.
No better way to validate the program than by carrying that kind of signature win into the long, cruel winter.
And on a day like this, against a GOAT like this, Saleh should take a page out of Riverboat Ron Middleton’s book with fourth-down fearlessness if only to keep Brady — and Rob Gronkowski, and Leonard Fournette — on the sideline for as long as possible.
Play to win since you have nothing to lose.
Because you better understand this about Tom Brady: he will approach this game as the Super Bowl. Because he approaches every game as the Super Bowl.
“Probably the two biggest things are the confidence in his pocket presence. Nothing really startles him too much,” Pinnock said, “and then the second is his decision-making time. It’s way more elite than any other quarterback. You need to be on your keys and your reads right away.”
And then there is always the danger of young Jets becoming starstruck the way so many young NBA players fell victim to the aura of Michael Jordan. Inflating Brady’s balls without him realizing it would agitate NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to no end.
“Unfortunately, I don’t know if there’s a defensive coordinator that’s had the answer or will have the answer ever,” Jets DC Jeff Ulbrich said.
Mark Sanchez beat Brady in his second game as a rookie in 2009, but he had a playoff team around him. Wilson, not so much.
Given what we witnessed against the Jaguars, Wilson is a good bet to outrush Brady, for what that’s worth.
“The [52-yard] run on Sunday, that was just a glimpse,” Pinnock said. “MetLife will be lit with a bunch of those.”
The imperfect rookie quarterback will have to play the perfect game, the very best game of his roller-coaster young career, for the Jets to have a chance to survive Brady. Bucs DC Todd Bowles has faced two of the Class of 2021 quarterbacks: Mac Jones was 31-for-40 for 275 yards, 2 TDs and 1 INT in a 19-17 Bucs win; Justin Fields was 22-for-32 for 182 yards, 0 TDs and 3 INTs and 8-38 rushing in a 38-3 Bucs victory. You better believe Bowles will be licking his blitz-happy chops.
Brady and the Bucs are again a win-now team and always will be.
Wilson and the Jets are a win-one-day team, and may or may not be. “We’re really trying to create a standard here as far as December football and when it really matters,” Ulbrich said.
Same goes for January football.
An earthquake of a win on this Sunday, against this quarterback, against this team? No Lombardi Trophy in the house, no confetti ready to fly. But so what? Last chance, only chance, to make it your Super Bowl. Your Super Sunday.
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