Jets envision themselves being super

Last Updated: 5:11 PM, January 22, 2010
Posted: 3:09 AM, January 22, 2010

The Super dreams have begun in earnest for the Jets, just 48 hours from Sunday, just 60 minutes from the Super Bowl. They can't help themselves now. With each passing hour, the dream becomes clearer and clearer. Some of them were Joe Montana as little boys. Some of them were Jerry Rice. And so on and so forth. Now it's their turn, and their time. Only Peyton Manning and the Colts can shatter their Super dream now.

"I've won a lot of Super Bowls already in the backyard," Jim Leonhard said, and smiled, and it was as if he were back in tiny Tony, Wis. "If I had one thing to go back and do again, I would have won a few AFC Championship games, so I knew what that felt like."

Leonhard and Rex Ryan, the Jets' rookie head coach, lost to the Steelers in last year's AFC Championship game, while both were with the Ravens. It hasn't stopped the diminutive safety from visualizing playing in Super Bowl XLIV in Miami. "I see a lot of big plays," Leonhard said, and smiled again.

Do you intercept any particular quarterback in the Super Bowl?

"It doesn't matter -- that's a blur," Leonhard said. "That other team never really shows up. It's always you. There's not a whole lot of color, there's not a whole lot of purple or gold in there, but I do know that I've played pretty well in all my Super Bowl experiences."

So you make a pick and take it to the house?

"That's one thing I've seen," Leonhard said.

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