Favre, Jets face must-win situation vs. Patriots

No offense, Thomas, but Favre is the first option.

We already know how the Patriots plan to attack the Jets. They'll mix the run and the pass and hope for a recurrence of last weekend's performance when they produced three drives of 11 or more plays -- including a franchise-best 19-snap series that buried the Bills.

Then they will count on Favre to screw up somewhere along the way. It happened in Week 2, and it can happen again. Only Favre has been more careful the past two weeks after Mangini implored him not to take the chances he did against Kansas City when he kept both teams in the game.

But that's not the point. This is: I don't care if it's Favre, Jones or Laveranues Coles -- someone, anyone, must propel the Jets to victory because this absolutely, positively is a must-win game. I'm not talking about what it does for them in the standings -- I'm talking about what it does for their psyche.

This is the reason they spent all that cash on big-name players. Not a win over Kansas City or Cincinnati. It's all about New England and wresting from the Patriots a division title that hasn't been anywhere but Foxborough the past five seasons.

"They will always be the team to beat, until somebody proves otherwise," Coles said.

Well, somebody just showed up on the schedule. I don't know how good the Jets are, but I know how good they want to be -- and that's better than New England. So prove it. The timing couldn't be better. Your team is on a roll. And you have one of the best big-game quarterbacks in Favre.

So prove it. If it doesn't happen now, it doesn't happen, period.

"New England doesn't change," Coles said. "If you put the film on and watch what they've done the past few years they continue to play the same things they played when they had Lawyer Milloy and all those other guys back there in the secondary.

"They are going to continue to play the same offense with Tom Brady and without Tom Brady. They are capable of plugging people in and keeping the train going. They have a formula, it works and they keep it going."

It's up to the Jets to stop it. Now. Otherwise, they can tell themselves that no matter whom they add or the Patriots subtract, they're always going to be playing for second.