New York Jets: Can they Repeat their Playoff Run?

The New York Jets aren't yet a dominant football squad, but they are a good enough team to get to the playoffs at least. Whether they'll get through the playoffs and win the Super Bowl, well, that's another story.

The exhibition season showed as much. They beat the rugged Philadelphia Eagles as an underdog, coming back to score three touchdowns after yielding the lead in the early going. This is the strongest opponent (based on 2009 record) they played in the preseason.

The victory against the Carolina Panthers was also convincing, although results weren't satisfying against the not-so-good New York Giants and the weak Washington Redskins.

Gang Green has the wherewithal to beat the best, earning early victories against the Tennessee Titans and New England Patriots last year. Then they got upended by the likes of the Buffalo Bills and the Miami Dolphins. Early re-matches against these two teams could be crucial to the Jets' playoff chances in 2010.

The Jets do fine against strong teams. They went 1-1 against the New England Patriots, and 1-1 against the Indianapolis Colts in 2009, with the win coming during the regular season, and by a larger margin (14 points) than the American Conference game loss (13 points).

Gang Green shows up poorly against weaker teams that strong teams routinely beat. As such, the Jets are the model of inconsistency.

But they are underestimated because many observers have them typecast as the exact opposite, a middling team that systematically beats weak teams, then won an extra game against other middling teams to luck out for the playoffs with a 9-7 record.

There will be a lot of close scores, meaning that if too many of them go against Gang Green, you can throw what I've just said out the window.

The defense is still potent, holding opponents to less than 20 points in all but the Giants match. With Darrell Revis back, the defense might be able to do better than three out of four in this regard.

But Mark Sanchez hasn't yet stepped up his game, and this might mean he won't always be able to score more points than the defense holds opponents to.

The team tried to bolster the weakest part of its game by trading for wide receiver Santonio Holmes from the Pittsburgh Steelers. But Holmes (who was allowed to play in the preseason) has been suspended for the first four regular season games.

The Jets worst nightmare is if they go 0-4 or 1-3 in close contests in those four games without Holmes, then do well for the rest of the season with him, but not well enough to make up for the early deficits. Their "best" case is if they win enough of these games for it not to matter.

Gang Green is still a work in progress. The season progression won't be pretty, but it might just be enough to get the job done, which is as much as a Jets fan will hope for most years.