Halfway home, it looked like there would be more free football to come – for better or for worse. Twenty-four yards after it left Josh Brown’s foot, 24 yards shy of the goal posts, the ball looked like it would surely curl safely inside the upright to Brown’s left, extending this New York-New York dance a few more furlongs.
“On the sideline, we were frozen,” Jets receiver Brandon Marshall would say.
In the stands, so were 80,898 people, most of them shaded blue, all of them looking for a reprieve from the kind of stomach-shredding loss that stays with you long after the game is done, long after the season is done.