09/17 — When Bryan Thomas was talking with reporters the other day about his fast start out of the box, D-linemate Sione Pouha sat a few lockers to his right saying sotto voce "Sackmaster ... Sackmaster."

"That's not the way I look at it," Thomas told me today about his start.

No, BT is an expressly humble guy who wants to do a good job and help his team. He knows last year's production wasn't up to his 2006 campaign, so he redoubled his efforts this past off-season.

And what has resulted, at least for the first two games of this season, is Sackmaster.

Thomas already has three sacks, after notching just 2.5 all last season. Two of those drops came against Chad Pennington in the opener, and he got No. 3 Sunday vs. New England when, as part of a five-man rush, he got past TE David Thomas (no relation to Bryan, nor to the founder of Wendy's) and grabbed Matt Cassel from behind as the first-time NFL starter was stepping up and away from a mammoth swat from NT Kris Jenkins.

If three sacks in the first two games of the season sounds like a lot for the Jets, well, it is. Thomas is in fact tied for second place in the NFL, one sack behind former teammate John Abraham, who has four sacks for the Falcons.

And consider this: Abraham, in his six Jets seasons, never got off to the start that Thomas has this year. In fact, the last time a Green & White defender had three sacks after two games, it was DE Shaun Ellis in 2003.

And the last Jet who had more after two games? That would be Mark Gastineau, who had that four-sack game at Indianapolis to open his historic 1984 season.

More Joy of Sacks

As former official Jerry Markbreit might've said, "Upon further review ... "

Upon further review of a play in the Jets-Pats game, Ellis now has two sacks in two games, and the Jets have eight sacks for the season, tied for second in the league with Tennessee, one behind league leader Seattle's nine.

The play in question was Cassel's run down the line of scrimmage midway through the second quarter, at the end of which Ellis got a hold of the Patriots QB's facemask.

The grasp was unfortunate, but it had nothing to do with the play, which was ruled a run for zero yards but, because Cassel motioned as if to pass and then tucked and scrambled, should have been ruled a sack for zero yards. And today Elias Sports Bureau changed that ruling to a sack.

It doesn't take any of the sting out of the Jets' 19-10 defeat. But it did signal an earlier start to the Jets' strong midgame pressure than first recognized. Beginning with that play, Cassel was sacked four times in a span of seven dropbacks.

Ellis, Thomas, et al., will try to keep up their sack pace Monday night against the Chargers and Philip Rivers, who's been dropped only twice so far this season.

Some Eye Muffs

CBS had some confusions in its Sunday telecast. Five minutes into the game, Jim Nantz was talking about New England's recent dominance when he issued this statement:

"See the history between these two. New England with a 20-game win streak in the regular season — it's the longest regular-season win streak in the history of the league."

It's true that the Patriots came into the game with an NFL regular-season record of 20 consecutive victories, but he wasn't talking about the Jets-Patriots series. As one-sided as it's been lately, the Jets had lost seven in a row (now eight) at home to the Pats and two straight at Gillette Stadium.

And in the third quarter, the network had some switching problems that resulted in a complete miss of the first play of the Jets' series that began with 6:20 to play on a Brett Favre incompletion for Laveranues Coles. No mention was made of the missed play, which leads me in my suspicious mind to think: Would any baseball telecast that missed a pitch during the pennant drives not profusely apologize for the error?