There are so many things to do in the autumn more satisfying than watching the NY Jets — raking leaves, hay rides, auto-erotic asphyxiation, etc. —- but I can’t help but be impressed with the accountability shown by head coach Herm Edwards, following Sunday’s debacle. From Newsday’s Ken Berger:

“My job as the head coach is to make sure we can put them in position to make them successful,” Edwards said, leading off his weekly day-after news conference with a mea culpa.

“I didn’t do a good enough job of that in this game. I feel I really let the team down,” Edwards said. “I put them in some situations where really they probably shouldn’t have been in … I put our team in a bad situation, in certain situations, and really cost them the game at the end of the day.”

Edwards acknowledged that he signed off on LaMont Jordan’s ill-fated halfback option pass that was intercepted by Baltimore’s Ed Reed near the end of the first half, setting up a touchdown that cut the Jets’ lead to 14-7 when they had a chance to go up 17-0 or 21-0. It was the turnaround play in a 20-17 overtime loss to Baltimore that also was stained by blatant clock mismanagement at the end of regulation.

“We put him in a bad situation,” Edwards said of Jordan. “He didn’t need to be in that situation. That’s it.”

I understood the options,” Edwards said. “I went, ‘You know what? Worst-case scenario, LaMont will run the ball. Just what he does in practice.'”

Jordan reiterated that he was trying to throw the ball out of the end zone because intended receiver Jerald Sowell was not open. “That play is catastrophic,” Edwards said. “The worst thing happens of all. We throw an interception.”

Edwards also took the blame for the clock-management meltdown at the end of the fourth quarter, during which the Jets wasted nearly a minute of game time and two timeouts before being forced to kick the tying field goal on third down with eight seconds left because they had no timeouts.

The postmortem revealed that the Jets mangled this sequence even worse than was first believed. First, no one noticed on Sunday that they squandered 23 seconds from the time Curtis Martin was tackled after a 1-yard loss on second-and-5 from the Baltimore 12 to the point when they called their first timeout with 55 seconds left.

“The play that was sent in, I didn’t want that play,” Edwards said. “I called timeout. I wanted a quarterback draw.”

As thought provoking JT’s go, Fox Sports’ excruciating JT The Brick ranks slightly ahead of Justin Timberlake, and far behind J.T. Leroy . The Brickster was howling in the aftermath of the Eagles’ 49-21 humilation of the Cowboys that “someone has to shut up Terrell Owens (above) and Donovan McNabb.” The easily outraged yackmeister, presumably offended by Owens’ antics in this whitewash, wondered aloud, “who is going to stop these Eagles?”

How soon JT forgot that someone already stopped the Eagles. They’re called the Pittsburgh Steelers and they did so convincingly 8 days ago. Philly are terribly impressive (especially when McNabb is allowed to run around looking for a receiver for 45 seconds), none more so when beating up on the lousy teams in their own division. The squad that so many are quick to proclaim the NFL’s best are still the same bunch (plus T.O.) that have lost 3 consecutive conference championships.