FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — The game was only as big as the Jets wanted it to be, and they did not want it to be big. That was what they said all week, diminishing the importance of playing New England, and regardless of whether the Jets believed it, the rhetoric served another purpose: It would insulate them from defeat.
“We’ll see them again,” running back Chris Ivory said late Sunday afternoon, after the Jets staggered in the fourth quarter and lost, 30-23, to fall to two games behind the unbeaten Patriots in the A.F.C. East.