The Jets and Patriots are set to renew their rivalry on Sunday in Foxboro, and Rex Ryan sounds as ready as ever for the divisional matchup.
The brash head coach may have lost a bunch of weight in the offseason, but he's yet to lose any of his bravado, despite an up-and-down start to the Jets' season. New York has been inconsistent thus far — looking awful at times — but they do enter Sunday's matchup as part of a four-way tie for first place in the AFC East at 3-3.
The Jets are coming off of a resounding win over the Colts in Week 6, while the Patriots will spend some time this week licking their wounds following a loss in Seattle. Apparently that's enough to inspire confidence in Ryan.
"I just think that I want them to know … and they know that I think we're going to beat them," Ryan said Monday, according to the New York Daily News. "I recognize that they're a great football team and [Bill] Belichick's a great coach. I've never once said he wasn't. But again, we're not going to back down or concede anything.
"They're going to get our best shot and we know we're going to get theirs. It really doesn't matter who says what. But we are going to be ourselves. We're coming to there to take our swing. We'll see if we land that punch to win the game."
That was about as far as Ryan wanted to go in terms of talking about the matchup. He even avoided the bait when asked if there was any sense of vulnerability around a three-loss Patriots team.
"Are they more vulnerable? I don't know. They lost three games. That's probably more than they normally lose in a season, but we need to worry about ourselves more than anybody else."
He also did a nice job of navigating around questions about the Patriots on Sunday.
"I don't feel like tugging on Superman's cape today," Ryan said following his team's win. "But maybe tomorrow."
