FLORHAM PARK -- There they go again, the Same Old Jets, bumbling something as simplistic as their choice of honorary captain for Sunday's game against the hated Patriots at MetLife Stadium.

Or so went a lot of the reaction after the Jets announced Wednesday that Mo Lewis would be their co-Pilot of the Game.

Mo Lewis! An inside linebacker who was one of the Jets' best players in the 1990s and early 2000s, but whose entire career has been reduced to the answer to a trivia question.

The story is well-worn into the fabric of the Jets-Patriots rivalry by now: On Sept. 23, 2001, it was Lewis who injured Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe. Some dude named Tom Brady--a sixth-round pick from the year before--took Bledsoe's place and has been there ever since, haunting the Jets and the rest of the NFL all the while.

"Blame Mo Lewis," even veteran strong-side linebacker Calvin Pace said this week.

Lewis' hit on Brady is seen as one of many flashpoints of futility for the Jets. The Patriots have owned the AFC East and won four Super Bowls since 2001, and of course it was a Jets player who provided Brady with his first opportunity to take the field. It's as if some cosmic force had arranged the whole affair just to agonize Jets fans and to give the rest of the country another Jets-inspired punchline to point and laugh at.

But the decision to make Lewis--of all people!--an honorary captain on Sunday was done for logistical purposes: Lewis has keep a low profile in his post-playing days, and a team spokesman said this was the only weekend he was available.

But whatever the reason, even the optics of the thing are in keeping with what's different about these Jets under general manager Mike Maccagnan and head coach Todd Bowles: The Patriots aren't in their heads. They're not spooked by their success. They're not buying into any notion of a curse here.

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(Besides, there really is no such thing as a sports curse, except maybe for the Cleveland Browns. That franchise is doomed.)

When Rex Ryan was the Jets' head coach, the Patriots game always loomed as the biggest one on the schedule. Because Ryan treated it that way, right from the beginning. During Patriots Week, Ryan would always pull out all the stops and reach deep into his bag of rhetorical tricks. The Patriots were what the Jets wanted to be, Ryan would say.

Ryan's teams often played the Patriots tough; five of his last six games against New England were decided by three points or less. But there's no mistaking that the Jets went 1-7 in Ryan's last eight meetings with the Pats, or that his Jets missed the playoffs in all of his last four seasons.

Now contrast that with Bowles' approach, which is chock-full of boring platitudes about just another game and it's not more important to be mentally ready to play the Pats than it is for any other team.

Are the Pats the envy of the AFC East, Bowles was asked this week?

"I think that's a fan question," Bowles answered. "I'm trying to get our own team off the ground so I don't worry about the envy or anything else like that."

And there it is. Mo Lewis piled up 521/2 sacks, 14 interceptions, and more than 1,000 tackles in his 13 seasons with the Jets. He deserves his day. His career need not be defined by what was really a coincidental twist of fate. And the Jets are better served by not feeding into that kind of defeatist mentality.

The Jets are flirting with their first playoff appearance in five years. They're riding a four-game winning streak. That they would honor Lewis on Sunday--a day when the Patriots and Brady are in their building with a chance to destroy their playoff hopes--says a lot about how the Jets see themselves these days. They actually made what looks like a confident, inspired choice.

The Jets are taking the long view. They're letting the world know their best hope of toppling the Patriots is by showing the world they're no longer worried about the Patriots.

Dom Cosentino may be reached at dcosentino@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @domcosentino. Find NJ.com Jets on Facebook.