What Will They Say on Monday?

Hearty congratulations to Herm Edwards, Chad Pennington and the New York Jets on their first road playoff win since 1982. The victory has to be especially sweet for the head coach and starting QB, both of whom get hit with salvos worthy of the U.S. artillery almost daily in the New York media.

Edwards? They say he's a good guy, an average coach, someone who doesn't know how to manage a game and someone who should fire his offensive coordinator, Paul Hackett.

Pennington? They say he doesn't have a gun, he doesn't muscle throws, he throws the safe ball, that his arm is hurt, and that he may not be a big-game QB.

Or, at least, that's what they said for the past several months. The popular view went something like this: the Jets backed into the playoffs, didn't go in exactly on a high, there were games with coaching gaffes and games where Randy Moss's college QB looked, well, like a college QB. And not, certainly, one who inked a contract worthy of Wall Street.

What will they say on Monday?

What will callers who call into WFAN, especially the Mike and the Mad Dog show, say? Will they become converts to the cause? Will they give credit where credit is due? Or will they say that it wasn't that the Jets played well, but that San Diego coach Marty Schottenheimer coached too conservatively, coached horribly, and shouldn't have put the kid kicker in the situation he put him in. That he performed about as well as a Union Army general in the Civil War prior to the arrival of Ulysses S. Grant and George Mead. Will they say that it was more that the Chargers lost the game than the Jets won it?

Let the fun begin, at least for those who can't take satisfaction in their good fortune (and for those New Yorkers who are dyed-in-the-wool Giants fans and who cannot give the Jets any props at all).

Because, for those on the Jets, players and coaches, they did what they had to do.

They won the game on the field.

All the rest is just conversation.