12/16 — There was no joy in the Jets' Gillette Stadium locker room after their 20-10 defeat by the undefeated Patriots in the rain and surrounded by the morning's snow. As Chad Pennington said, "I don't think you ever prove a point by losing."

So call it cold comfort. The Jets weren't a happy bunch, but they came as close as all but Baltimore and Philadelphia in trying to hang that first L on the Pats.

In fact, the ring metaphor was heard a few times in the defensive end of the long rectangular dressing room.

"It stinks that we lost," LB Eric Barton said, 'but I think we showed a lot of character. Everyone fought the whole game against a very good opponent."

"We're a team with a lot of heart and a lot of pride," fellow 'backer Victor Hobson said. "We knew we were going to come out, fight hard and play good football."

Yes, the defense did. The Patriots were held to season lows in total yardage (265), net passing yardage (134), first downs (16). The team that was threatening to set the all-time NFL record for most points per game in a season (they came in with a 38.7 average) was held to its lowest point total of the season.

The Patriots, who scored at least three offensive touchdowns in every one of their previous 13 games, were held to one on this day, and that only to cap a 3-yard drive after a blocked punt.

Did the weather have something to do with keeping things close? It surely did, but pundits who knew that rain, snow and wind would hit this game still made predictions such as 55-3, Patriots, and those who guessed scores of 70-0 and 100-0 earlier in the week were just begging to look bad.

To the defenders' credit, most let the pregame gloom-and-doom hype roll off their backs.

"That's probably why they're not out there on the field," Hobson said of those who predicted a rout of Biblical proportions. "But that's their job. You can't fault them for that. We knew what we came here to do, and that was to play good, hardnosed Jets football."

"Obviously, we want to win," Bowens said. "Everybody who said the pointspread was 60 points or whatever, we were a little ticked off about that. I think we showed a lot today, how capable we can be as a team when we're all playing together. I think it also showed how our season's gone. We had some mental mistakes, some turnovers."

The offense will take the heat for a lot of those problems. Because like the Patriots' offense, the Jets offense struggled. Some of it was the insertion of Chad Pennington and Brad Smith into the game early on after Kellen Clemens was injured on his only pass of the game, some by the running game being almost non-existent (except for Leon Washington's 49-yard option run), some on a pair of catchable balls that Justin McCareins didn't catch, some on the overall shortcomings on third down (3-for-14 conversions) and in the red zone (no TDs on four opportunities).

"It's one thing to be successful on first down and second down," Pennington said, "but third down and the red zone, that's where you make your money. We didn't make enough."

McCareins was reserved afterwards. Asked about his touchdown catch that was overturned on replay challenge when it was determined he juggled the ball and didn't get both feet inbounds to establish possession, he said the ball was slippery.

"I was thinking it could go either way," McCareins said of watching the replay on the stadium scoreboard while the review was taking place. "I thought I had it. Obviously not. ... We were playing a great team. I missed opportunities today to make it a tight ballgame. Can't miss opportunities."

And that's how WR Jerricho Cotchery saw it as well.

"Guys took it on themselves, they tried to make a statement on their own," Cotchery said. "We had a good game plan ... we weren't able to make the plays we needed to."

So no, this wasn't a moral victory. But there is a difference between kidding yourself about how well you did and knowing that you did the best you could against the NFL's finest.

"I think it shows a positive," Bowens said, "that against the best team in ball right now, we played pretty good for 60 minutes."