It was so confusing it looked simple.
Simple, that is, if you were a Jets fan and you were watching in awe as the offense -- the line, the runners and the quarterback -- confused the Indianapolis Colts in a first half that will become a part of Jets playoff lore.
PHOTO: AFP
As usual, things worked especially well because Curtis Martin was running exceptionally well. He averaged 4.8 yards a carry in the first half: 63 yards on 13 attempts. He saw only spot duty in the second half, but the damage had been considerable and the Jets cruised to a 41-0 victory over the Colts in their first-round American Football Conference playoff game Saturday.
The theme was set on the second play from scrimmage. Martin, with his blockers pummeling the Colts' smallish defensive line, ran for 10 yards. The offense that was to take a 24-0 lead by halftime was instantly empowered.
The threat of Martin allowed quarterback Chad Pennington to exercise his creative confusion. His play-faking ability may be unmatched, even though he has played in all of 13 NFL games and this was his first playoff appearance.
Pennington repeatedly froze the defense with make-believe handoffs to Martin, or to Richie Anderson, then would whip a pass to a receiver.
"It all starts with the run," said the former Jets quarterback Boomer Esiason, now a television and radio analyst. "They pay attention to the run, and that allows the quarterback to do some things."
By the second half, the Jets were sending receivers on those slanting patterns that are the hallmarks of the West Coast offense, an offense that must have a dangerous running threat to be effective. The run sets up those 8- and 10-yard slants that have a high probability of being completed and a low possibility of being intercepted.
Martin's cavorting bodes well for the Jets in the playoffs. Saturday's game was his fourth straight significant performance, after games of 127, 106 and 83 yards rushing.
Not coincidentally, it was also the fifth game back for Dave Szott, the veteran left guard who had not played a down until December because of knee surgery in training camp. Szott was the only off-season free-agent pickup to start on offense, and he had figured prominently in the club's plans.
Martin and Pennington have been playing off each other since the fifth game of the season, when Pennington got his chance. Teams stopped bunching up to halt Martin, who was hobbled by a painful ankle injury. Instead, defenses thought the untested quarterback was handing off to Martin, they ran to the runner and Pennington fooled them with a pass.
That play set the tone for Saturday's rout.
On the Jets' opening drive, Martin ran right twice, up the middle once, then appeared headed for another run to the right.
The Colts' defense followed Martin. But Pennington faked the handoff, hid the ball and then tossed a 10-yard pass to his left, to Anderson, who was all alone. What followed was the longest pass completion in Jets playoff history: a 56-yard touchdown that surely must have embarrassed the Colts. Anderson bounded down the left sideline and eluded a couple of defenders on his way to eclipsing Don Maynard's 52-yard pass play with Joe Namath in the 1968 AFL playoffs.
Namath created that play with his arm strength. Pennington made his with brain as well as brawn.
Pennington's play fakes are so good that Bob Wischusen, the Jets' radio voice, says he hesitates when Pennington looks as if he has just handed off.
Saturday, after the touchdown pass to Anderson, Wischusen joked, "Fooled me," when asked about the play in the radio booth.
Esiason, who was at Saturday's game, recalled that Pennington had said he used to watch the Colts' Peyton Manning to learn the art of the play fake. "And Manning said he used to watch me," Esiason said.
Martin was not the only player who benefited from the misdirection. The Jets scored on five of their first seven possessions; half a dozen receivers got into the action and five players ran the ball.
One receiver was Santana Moss. With 62 seconds left in the half and the Jets on the 4-yard line, he wound up in the right corner of the end zone. To say he was not touched, after Pennington had made the Colts believe he was looking elsewhere, is an understatement. Moss was 5 yards from anyone else.
That was one of three touchdown tosses that allowed Pennington to tie Vinny Testaverde and Namath for the most in a Jets playoff game.
And Martin? He spent most of the second half resting.
After all, he still has a sore ankle.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier