LaRon Landry knows a circus. He was part of a 2009 Washington Redskins team that was a couple elephants shy of Barnum & Bailey. And what he sees in New York in his infancy as a Jet isn't close.
"It's been a real circus there since '09, really all four years after my rookie year," Landry said of the Redskins organization. "It's totally different here, like night and day. (Washington and New York are) the only two organizations I've been with, so I can only compare the two. But that said, I don't see anything from the top of the organization on down that's even a reflection of here. I love it here. Sometimes, I can't get myself out of (the facility). I do everything here. When I was with the Redskins, it was, 'OK, I'm going to work out and I'm ready to go home.' "
At this point, it'd be pretty difficult to declare the Jets fixed. They've played one real game, and Landry has yet to see a bomb go off in Florham Park. At some point, all teams deal with those. The 2011 Jets, of course, didn't handle them very well, which is why it's best to wait for one to explode in Jersey before really assessing how far this group has come.
But if Landry's initial feelings are worth anything, paired with Gang Green's season-opening 48-28 drubbing of the Buffalo Bills, it's this: The Jets' summer wasn't nearly the carnival inside that it appeared to be from the outside. Again, Landry's seen disaster -- having been in D.C. as the Redskins quit on Jim Zorn, as Albert Haynesworth quit on football, and as Mike Shanahan and Donovan McNabb quit on each other -- so he has perspective.
That doesn't mean this team is headed back into the rarefied air it entered in Rex Ryan's first two seasons, which ended in conference championship games. It doesn't even necessarily mean the team is going back to the playoffs.
It does, on the other hand, explain why the Jets were peeved by the cover of the New York Post's NFL preview edition -- which featured a cartoon showing New York Giants players cruising along in a convertible, Lombardi Trophies in tow, while a Jets clown car plodded behind -- and why Ryan used it as fuel for his club prior to kickoff last weekend. His message to the team was simple: Prove to the football-viewing world you had better be taken seriously.
"Man, what if somebody called your act a circus?" third-year Jet Antonio Cromartie asked rhetorically. "Would you take it personally? Exactly. My point exactly: I think anybody would. I definitely take it personally. It's speaking about the character of the guys in this locker room, and speaking about the character of this organization. I think everybody here takes it personally. We're out to prove everybody wrong."
Harrison: Week 2 Power Rankings
After the season's opening week, changes abound in Elliot Harrison's Power Rankings, including a new No. 1 team. More ...To be clear, the Jets made their bed on that. Last December's implosion was well-documented and real. Bravado finally caught up with Ryan's program, and the combustible personalities assembled made for a combustible locker room. If they wanted to kill the circus idea at that point, there probably would've been better moves to make than trading for Tim Tebow, the sport's most polarizing figure in 2011. But despite all the distractions Tebow invites, Jets coaches viewed his acquisition as a football transaction that simply made the team better. Ryan's confident his players understand this.
"He's been awesome," said guard Brandon Moore, a 2011 captain, of Tebow. "Of course, in the beginning, guys were like, 'This is weird -- why would we bring him?' And then once the roles were defined as to what was going on, it's fine. I mean, I think the Wildcat and the roles he's going to be used in can be very helpful. I look at it as bringing in another running back that can bring something different, like if you bring in a running back that's a Reggie Bush-type. The element he brings to our offense, I look at him like that."
Just framing it that way -- Tebow's a running back!!! -- could cause a stir, but Moore's larger point is that the Jets are more equipped than ever to absorb whatever storyline comes at them. Moore has been in New York for more than a decade, so he gets it. He said that because the Jets have operated in this bubble through HBO's "Hard Knocks" in 2010 and "other incidents, good and bad," his team is "used to it." And there's a better understanding of how these things happen.
"I understand what the Post is all about. I mean, I read the Post," Moore said, smiling. "They're all about headlines and shock value and they don't understand what goes on in this facility. To make a mockery of what we do every day is somewhat offensive, but in the grand scheme of things, I couldn't care less about what the media thinks about us as an organization."
We'll have a better idea of how much all this means in a month. Between now and Oct. 8, the Jets play the Pittsburgh Steelers, San Francisco 49ers and Houston Texans. They get the archrival New England Patriots Oct. 21, but then the schedule lightens up (at least on paper) considerably from there.
Time will tell how this group deals with potholes along the way. But at least to this point, how the Jets have been perceived might not quite match the reality. You can take that from a guy who knows a burgeoning disaster when he sees it.
"It's way off, definitely," Landry said. "Everybody's working together. Everybody wants to win. I don't know why they say it's a circus. We have fun, and we try to be victorious. We work together as a unit. I wasn't here when the team was divided; I haven't got that yet."
Follow Albert Breer on Twitter @AlbertBreer.
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