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My own stat power rankings has them 17th overall, slightly ahead of Miami and New England. Thus, the Jets are more fairly described as a leading mediocrity among mediocrities. The Dolphins are darlings now, but they've squeaked by most weeks. The Patriots have a terrible pass defense (24th in yards per pass attempt allowed). Plus they're just 21st in yards allowed per rush.

Last week was some sort of miracle. That's a game the Jets have spent their existence losing. They're the team that, after snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, engenders the question, "What on earth were they thinking?" Last week, they benefited from it in a battle of coaching acumen that could best be described as a race to the bottom.

Abe Elam saved the day with his blitz of J.P. Losman. Fortunately, Shaun Ellis found the handle after the ball was stripped and barreled into the end zone because the Jets were not going to score a winning touchdown no matter where they recovered the ball. Consider they didn't have a single first down in the fourth quarter of the game, yet scored 10 points in the period to win it. Incredible.

We're going to get to Jets-Seahawks in the prediction below.

But first, I must again say what I'm sick of saying because it's so obvious: Leon Washington needs to be used more. Why are the Jets so stubbornly clueless about deploying their greatest weapon?

If Dr. Oppenheimer's Manhattan Project handed Eric Mangini and Brian Schottenheimer the atomic bomb during World War II, we'd all be speaking German now. Maybe Japanese. I dare anyone, even Mangini and Schottenheimer, to declare that Washington is not the team's most explosive offensive force. You know who leads the NFL with nine plays of 40 yards or more? Leon Washington! OK, we're counting kick returns, which isn't fair, but he does have four of those long plays from scrimmage. That's hard to do when you get two (TWO!) touches a game like Washington did against Buffalo.

I'm running out of ways to say this. Let's try it this way. The object of every defense in the NFL is to figure out a way to neutralize the opposing team's greatest offensive weapon. To defuse him, if you will. That's what defensive coordinators spend weeknights in their offices obsessing about between short naps on their cots while their wives and kids are left at home to fend for themselves. But the Jets coaching staff does this for them. The Jets coaching staff voluntarily takes the ball out of the hands of their best offensive player.

I long have held the Strat-O-Matic principle when it comes to assessing coaching decisions. There's a belief that coaches will do anything to win. That's not true. Winning is very important to them. But more important to them (because it's more likely to quickly cost them their jobs) is avoiding losing unconventionally. So while a Strat-O-Matic coach will go for it on fourth-and-1 from midfield with a narrow lead in the final minutes, the real NFL coach won't 99 percent of the time. Going for it, of course, does maximize your chance of winning the game, which is what both coaches should most want. But going for it also maximizes your chance for losing in a way that's unconventional (in the NFL) and thus having to answer questions more defensively in a postgame media barrage that Strat coaches need not endure.

Here's how this comes into play with Washington: Thomas Jones is a conventional back. He's fifth in the league in rushing and has 14 touchdowns. He does the things that conventional football people (i.e., most of the NFL media) think is most important: run the ball well between the tackles. If you give Washington a bigger role, Jones will gripe and the media will take his side. Then, you better win or else. No one is barking at Mangini for essentially benching Washington, a superior player, even though many of these same people will say that Washington is again the Jets most valuable player. So, it's much more conservative (i.e., safe) to stick with the status quo (Jones doing those conventional things). Washington thus gets mere crumbs and the Jets coaches hope he can still manage to bake a soufflé.

Watching the game again Tuesday on tape, I was struck that on a key fourth-quarter sequence that could have salted a win that was absolutely critical to their season, Washington was on the bench. And not just on first and second down when the run was in play. But on third-and-two from the shotgun (passing) on the Buffalo 12 up 21-20 in the fourth quarter. Washington is not even the third-down back now? That actually is not only merely stupid but unconventional enough raise the ire of even shallow football thinkers.

Prediction time: This is Mike Holmgren's final home game, though I doubt anyone in Seattle cares, including the Seahawks. No Matt Hasselbeck (even though he's been terrible even when healthy enough to play); Seneca Wallace is the quarterback again this week.

Seattle's defense has shown some signs of at least mediocrity of late. But the Jets offense can make any defense look good right now when Favre is off. The Seahawks are also without stalwart left tackle Walter Jones. This is not a bad matchup for a Jets defense that really can't cover because the Seahawks have trouble protecting the passer (24th in sack percentage) throwing downfield (29th in offensive YPA). The Jets are limping towards the finish line. I can't see how anyone can feel very good about them winning any game right now, but Seattle is just awful. Vegas has the Jets as a 4.5-point favorite. My index says it should be exactly that on the merits. (No surprise since I'm certain that the bookmakers use the same stats.) Plus the Jets need the game and the Seahawks are thinking about next year with a new coaching staff. Discount the silly travel factor. Playing on the West Coast isn't a big deal because it requires no body clock adjustment. The Jets are playing Sunday at 4:05 ET, which they sometimes do on the East Coast. Jets 24, Seahawks 20.