EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Imagine being sequestered for the last nine weeks, with no access to television or smartphones or the news media, and imagine that the first act of re-entry involved attending the Jets’ game Sunday at MetLife Stadium.
Anyone in that situation would have come away confident that Jaiquawn Jarrett was set to be the first active player inducted into the team’s ring of honor; that T. J. Graham merited consideration for a Pro Bowl spot at two positions, receiver and special teams; and that the Jets were rolling toward a playoff berth.
All would have been reasonable conclusions to draw while watching the Jets defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers, 20-13, a comprehensive victory for a team that cannot be comprehended, and avoid the ignominy of becoming the first team in franchise history to lose nine consecutive games in a single season.
During a break at the end of the third quarter, with the Jets leading by 20-3, the team’s Flight Crew danced in the end zone to “We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister, as if to say, “Eight losses are fine, but nine, well, that’s just unacceptable.”
Jets Replay: Week 10
CreditBarton Silverman/The New York Times
Instead of yearning for the bad old days of the Rich Kotite era, the Jets avoided further comparison to the worst teams of recent vintage by scoring the first 17 points; recording more takeaways (four) than they had in their previous nine games combined; and limiting a Pittsburgh offense that had scored 94 points in its last two games, both victories, to no touchdowns for more than 58 minutes, until Martavis Bryant’s 80-yard reception with 1 minute 16 seconds left.
“It feels like we won the Super Bowl, it took us so long to get win No. 2,” linebacker Calvin Pace said.
How cathartic it must have been for Jets fans to cheer when Pittsburgh’s Shaun Suisham hooked a 23-yard field-goal attempt. Or when Ben Roethlisberger, who had set an N.F.L. record by firing 12 touchdown passes with 862 passing yards the past two weeks, threw into triple coverage. Or when the Steelers (6-4) turned the ball over on consecutive first-half possessions.
How disorienting it must have been for Jets fans to see anyone, let alone a reserve safety like Jarrett, recover a fumble and intercept two passes; to see Graham, who had caught one pass since signing six weeks ago, catch a 67-yard touchdown pass from Michael Vick and recover a fumble; and to see their team, outscored by 98 points entering Sunday, set up in the victory formation for the first time since the Sept. 7 season opener against Oakland.
The Jets had been “hovering around the bottom for a long time,” offensive lineman Willie Colon said.
“The only way was up,” he added.
That might have been how Pittsburgh safety Mike Mitchell felt, too, when on the game’s penultimate play, he tried to leap over Jets center Nick Mangold and prevent Vick from taking a knee. A fracas erupted — Mangold called it “a dirty play” — and the crowd, by then thinned of the thousands of Terrible Towels twirled by Steelers fans, roared.
Three and a half hours before kickoff, before a plane toted a banner reading “Jets Rebuilding Since 1969” above the stadium, the parking lots teemed with so many Pittsburgh fans that the signs along the highways nearby could have read: “Steelers game 1 p.m. Plan alternate route.” Sprinkled among the black and gold were large pockets of green and white, of Jets fans who on a splendid autumn day were rewarded for their decision to watch a 1-8 team instead of pursuing more enjoyable pastimes.
“We still come,” said Griffin Handley, 42, a longtime season-ticket holder who works in finance and lives in Stamford, Conn., “no matter what they do to our team.”
Handley’s tent was loaded with high school friends from Connecticut, including Rich Fedeli, 41, the owner of a commercial printing company who lives in New Canaan and named his miniature apricot poodle Geno, after the deposed quarterback Geno Smith.
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“My dog looks at me like, Why’d you name me that?” Fedeli said.
The human segment of Jets fans might wonder whether this season would have unfolded differently had the team given Vick a fair shot at winning the starting job out of camp, or at least not waited until last week to award him his first start. On Sunday he completed 10 of 18 passes for 132 yards and two touchdowns; rushed for 39 yards to surpass 6,000 for his career, extending his record for a quarterback; and, for the second consecutive week, did not commit a turnover.
“Absolutely, I think if I was starting from Day 1, then maybe it would have been an opportunity,” Vick said, adding that saying otherwise would have shown a lack of confidence in himself. “But that wasn’t the case. I wasn’t put in that situation.”
Now he has been, and in the Jets’ next game, in two weeks at Buffalo, Vick would be well served to duplicate his performance from the first quarter Sunday, when he helped the Jets outgain the Steelers, 164 yards to 5, and outscore them by 17-0.
A sequence of three offensive snaps from that period encapsulated the Jets’ fortunes: Jarrett’s 10-yard sack of Roethlisberger on a third down; Vick’s 67-yard touchdown to Graham; and Jarrett’s recovery of the first of two Antonio Brown fumbles, giving the Jets possession at the Pittsburgh 20. Five plays later, on a third down, Vick found Jace Amaro in the back of the end zone.
Instead of announcing the end of the first quarter, the referee Terry McAulay could have said, “What just happened?” The crowd — Steelers and Jets fans alike — could have responded, “We don’t know.”
The teams did not swap uniforms in the parking lot, and a horde of disgruntled fans did not kidnap the Jets and demand as ransom the job of General Manager John Idzik, who could have gazed toward the sky at practice Wednesday and seen an airplane toting a banner that called for his firing.
On the Jets’ sideline, though, Coach Rex Ryan knew what to expect. Or at least he thought he did. During the losing streak, his mood in his postgame news conferences spanned the five stages of grief, seeming to reach a state of resigned acceptance after last week’s defeat at Kansas City.
He has never stopped praising his players’ effort, though, or expecting that the defensive game plans he concocts — defusing Roethlisberger, for instance, with two backups, Marcus Williams and Phillip Adams, at cornerback — will work. Marching into the interview room late Sunday afternoon, Ryan placed his hands on the lectern and declared, “All right, finally.”
“Man, oh man, I’m glad we didn’t lose that game; losing nine in a row would have been tough,” Ryan said, deadpan. He added: “For people that count this football team out, you do so at your own risk, your own peril. Because I tell you what, this team is tough. I’ve said it the whole time. Not that this win is going to catapult us into the playoffs, but it’s a big win for us.”
The Jets have been dismissed for more than a month now, and with good reason. At the end of this desultory season, Ryan could be, too, for here they are, the best 2-8 team in the league, easy and difficult to believe all at once.