The late Soupy Sales was famous for taking a pie in the face, but I took a pie in the face last weekend when my favorite coach to lambast stuck me with a loss when he guided his New York Jets to a Wild Card win over the Bengals in Cincinnati. Jets Head Coach Rex Ryan had by my appraisal said everything wrong this season from the podium, beginning with defending his team like they were winners when they piled up a bunch of yards but lost at home to the Miami Dolphins.

His antics from press conferences also raised my suspicions on how well his team would do in the playoffs when he declared his Jets didn’t back into the playoffs. They wouldn’t have been here had the Colts not benched their team for the second half of their game last month, and they didn’t get the Bengals full effort in a near meaningless game for Cincinnati on the final day of the regular season when a playoff berth was on the line for the Jets.

Trust me on this, the Jets backed into the playoffs.

But, once here, they have gotten the last laugh on my claims that their coach was every bit the clown Soupy Sales was, or even Bozo, with his unorthodox press conferences.

“We should be favored to win the Super Bowl,” Ryan claimed before his team took a step towards that goal with a road win at Cincinnati last Saturday. Now he has declared that the path to the Jets first Super Bowl win since Joe Namath led the American Football League to their first Championship Game triumph over the established National Football League to conclude the 1968 season, is as simple as three more wins and a trophy presentation.

Well, he got me last Saturday when he beat the Bengals, and now he is meeting the team with the longest current winning streak in football, the San Diego Chargers.

Norv Turner guides San Diego into this home playoff game after earning a bye week while the Jets were playing during the Wild Card Weekend. After losing a Week Six home Monday Night Football game to the Denver Broncos, San Diego has run off 11 straight wins and an impressive 7-3-1 mark against the point spread. The Chargers have veterans at every spot, a team rich in playoff history, and a quarterback that has gained the respect of both his teammates and opponents.

One team that is probably rooting for Ryan and his Jets today is the Indianapolis Colts, who have twice lost to San Diego in the postseason during battles between Chargers signal caller Philip Rivers and future Hall of Fame Quarterback Peyton Manning.

But, before we get to that highly anticipated AFC Championship Game battle between the top two seeds in the AFC, the Chargers have to switch the lights off on the Jets media grabbing coach.

This should be easy for the Chargers, right?

I mean, sure New York beat the Bengals last week but that might have been driven by a horrible performance by Cincinnati quarterback Carson Palmer. It appeared I had a better chance of catching one of his overthrown passes in my office than his receivers did last week at Paul Brown Stadium. It was Palmer’s second postseason appearance with the Bengals, and both went horribly bad for the one time Southern California field general who the Bengals made the first pick in the 2003 NFL Draft.

In his first postseason experience, Palmer was injured on the game’s opening series and the Steelers went on to a win en route to a victory in Super Bowl XL. The only thing injured with Palmer last week was his reputation as a big time quarterback. He is now 0-2 in postseason play, while another USC quarterback alum, Mark Sanchez, is today looking for his second consecutive postseason win.

Problem with knocking Ryan before this game is that his Jets are actually in a very advantageous spot to give the Chargers more than they want. If the Jets win this, the volume will obviously be turned up on Ryan’s rhetoric … but, behind his boisterous rants the truth is the Jets have the top ranked defense and a one-dimensional and in recent times, mistake free offense, that can gain big yards on the ground against a San Diego team that may be as overconfident as I was in expecting an easy win by the Bengals over these same Jets last week.

In the day’s first game, Brett Favre begins the work on why he was brought to Minnesota … to win the Vikings their first Super Bowl ever. That quest begins today when he guides perhaps the most complete team in football against a Dallas Cowboys squad that has quieted all doubters with four consecutive impressive wins at a time of year that they had been known to collapse.

While the Minnesota and Dallas offenses are dynamic behind Favre and Cowboys’ quarterback Tony Romo, this game should be decided by the defenses. The stop units on both sides have playmakers that are capable of game changing heroics … but my work indicates Favre will have an easier time cutting up the Cowboys secondary than Romo will moving the Dallas offense.

Qoxhi Picks: New York Jets (+8) over San Diego Chargers