Francesa: L-U-C-K…Luck…luck…luck

By: Eduardo Perez

1/18/10

Sunday night the Jets won one of the biggest games in their history upsetting the Chargers who had come in as winners of 11 straight. All listeners of WFAN and Mike’D Up know Mike Francesa (aka Diet Coke) has been slow to give the Jets any credit for making the playoffs and winning their first round game versus the Bengals. To refresh everyone’s memory, the last 3 weeks Diet Coke has said the following:

• The Jets are a .500 team (calling them a 7-7 team, despite their record being 9-7)
• Since they lost their last “real” game to the Falcons, they were frauds
• The Jets have an “ok defense” (despite being ranked #1 overall in the NFL)
• The Jets unequivocally would have lost their game to the Colts despite being down only 15-10 mid-way through the 3rd Qtr. Diet Coke would go on to say that he was 100% certain the Jets would lose that game if Manning remained on the field
• The 10-6 Bengals despite sweeping the Ravens and Steelers and winning their division were a mediocre team. So beating them didn’t say much

With that in mind, I figured Diet Coke on his Sunday night TV show would finally give the Jets some props for beating the juggernaut Chargers…I should have known better. Diet Coke opened his show giving the Jets defense credit for its 3rd Qtr performance (why only the 3rd Qtr? SD hadn’t scored less that 20 any game this year) and instead lead with six L-U-C-Ky breaks the Jets NEEDED to win the game. He even provided in-depth football analysis stating, “God plays in these games” as to why the Jets won, before mentioning their punishing ground game or any successful coaching moves by Rex. I won’t bore you with all six, but I will highlight one as an example of how “lost” (a favorite word of Diet Coke’s) is and it’s what Diet Coke called the biggest play of the game. The Leonard interception? The subsequent Sanchez TD pass to Keller? The long Green TD run? The Jets converting the game ending 4th and 1? Kaeding missing 3 field goals?

NO to every single one of these plays.

According to Diet Coke, the biggest play in the game was an illegal block in the back penalty that occurred in the 2nd Qtr on Chargers?! WOW…OMG…WHAT THE HECK? His assumption was that if that flag wasn’t thrown (despite admitting it was the right call), the Chargers would’ve had the ball on the 22 yard-line and would’ve scored to make it 14-3 (another huge assumption). With analysis like this it’s hard to even take him seriously anymore. Diet Coke is fast approaching the Skip Bayless Zone: fabricating a point of view and sticking to it despite fact and logic pointing to the contrary (@metsfanmurph tweeted about Bayless this morning). But hey, maybe this week if the Jets beat the Colts to continue their improbable run to the Super Bowl, Francesa will finally admit that he is wrong? Nah, no way! Instead I’m sure NY’s lead sports talk personality will give more credit to the Jets having “angels in the endzone” and luck…luck…luck as to why they have made the Super Bowl. So this week sit back and listen in amusement as Diet Coke gets defensive from the barrage of Jet fan callers that say, “Hey, Mike, you S-U-C-K… suck…suck…suck!”

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