Over at a site, The Jets Blog, they utilized the great resource known to football purists as "Football Outsiders." This site is devoted to researching the game through statistics and coming up with formulas to determine how good or bad a team is, not just overall, but in the most specific categories you could imagine.
The Jets Blog took a look at a few categories and compared their hometown Jets with their next opponents, our Baltimore Ravens. It came out with the results that the Ravens seemed to have the stronger defense and the key to stopping Baltimore's offense was to blanket and shut down RB Ray Rice and force QB Joe Flacco to go to his wide receivers, which he has not consistently done in 2011, despite his record-setting connections with rookie Torrey Smith in last week's 37-7 beatdown of the St. Louis Rams.
In addition, many people overlooked the seven receptions by Anquan Boldin on 14 targeted passes by Flacco in that same game. Due to the Ravens "mis-step" in their loss to the Tennessee Titans in week two, many people are unsure which Ravens team they will see on Sundays, including the New York Jets fans. However, true Ravens fans believe it was the team that pounded both the Pittsburgh Steelers and Rams in weeks one and three than the one that laid that egg in week two.
What does interest me the most about the story linked above is the reader's comments. Obviously loyal Jets' fans, some of them have a realistic view of the game and think if anywhere near the New York team that got bullied by the Oakland Raiders in their 34-24 loss last week shows up in Baltimore on Sunday night, they will go home 2-2 and under a slew of forthcoming criticism.
However, one fan in particular, wearing green-tinted blinders, thinks the Jets will win based on the fact that he says, regarding Flacco:
"Don’t let Flacco’s stats fool you. He’s throwing 54% completion and has benefit from playing two very bad teams (one of which he lost to). He has 7 TDs and decent yardage, but at this point, I think it’s safe to say Sanchez is better than he is."
I thought, "wait, did I just read that? This dude thinks it's safe to say that Sanchez is better than Joe?" Of course, being an emotional supporter of Flacco, I responded that other than people in New York and in GQ Magazine, no one else around the league thinks Sanchize could carry Joe's undies and never was or ever will be the equal of Joe Cool.
Check it out.