11/30 — This was a tough one to read. This was not a garden-variety Jets locker room after a home loss from recent seasons. This was a 34-17 home loss to Denver after two of the greatest road victories in franchise history. And it clearly stung all involved, none less than the head coach.

"I was really disappointed with the way we played today," Eric Mangini said at the start of his postgame news conference. "We've established a certain way to play football around here, a certain identity, and that was nothing close to that today."

He faulted the defense's tackling, the inconsistency in the running game, and the coaching. He didn't alibi the conditions, which were plainly bad from opening kickoff to final gun.

"It didn't seem to affect them very much," he said of the Broncos' play in the rain.

On the quality of the Jets' practices during the week of preparation for Denver, he said, "I think it could've been better. It should be better."

"I'm not really looking for a motivator or a silver lining here," Mangini said of the loss. "I'm looking for good football."

Mangini wasn't taking anything away from the Broncos. But he wasn't happy with his own team and it showed.

"I haven't gauged it," he said of his postgame emotion level. "I'm not comparing this to some other point where I was angry or upset. I felt that as a group, we didn't play the way we should play or where we need to play as we move forward through the season."

Mangini doesn't get publicly perturbed a lot. I asked a few players in the muted Meadowlands lockers if their coach was as intense in his postgame remarks to them as he was with the reporters, as intense as he'd ever been with them.

"I really can't compare how upset he'd been at other times," said rookie TE Dustin Keller. "But if he was, he'd have reason to be. This team, this offense has just been rolling up to this point, it's been playing really well. There's so much ability on this offense, so many different things we can do. To go out and not get this one is huge for us.

"Coach Mangini has really high expectations for us. We appreciate that. We expect him to."

For the defense, LB Bryan Thomas had a similar response.

"There's a lot he has to be upset with — we didn't play well," Thomas said. "The players, we're upset ourselves."

Like their coach, the Jets players gave all due credit to the visitors from the Rockies.

Of Broncos QB, Brett Favre said, "He was the better man tonight."

Of the Denver offense, Thomas said, "You've got to take your hats off to them. They did a really good job."

There was no disrespect at all in the Jets' room, as much as Denver WR Brandon Marshall tried to stir it up.

"We took it personal," said Marshall. "Ninety percent of the guys and coaches said what they're supposed to say about the Jets, but there were some things that rubbed us the wrong way. We heard that when we got here, we should just stay on the plane. It didn't help that the fans booed when some of our guys went down."

There wasn't a single Jet that said anything disrespectful about the Broncos before or after this game. Marshall's argument there might be with some ESPN pregame analysis. As for the booing, Jets fans may be notorious but they weren't booing the injuries; they were reacting to a run of Denver players getting injured as the Jets appeared to be trying to run their hurryup offense.

But as Mangini said of the injuries, "You'd have to talk to them about that. Any injury situation, I take it at face value."

And as Broncos boss Mike Shanahan said, "I was just hoping guys were temporarily hurt. I wasn't sure if there was anything serious or not. The elbow injury to [DT] Josh Shaw looks like it could be serious. When Dré Bly went out, I said, 'Holy cow, what do we have left?' But guys stepped up."

So this also was also not an issue that could be hung on the Jets. What was an issue was why the Green & White didn't give the Broncos as good a game as the Broncos gave them, and what they do about it?

Was this a case of overconfidence? As nose tackle Kris Jenkins told SNY's Steve Overmyer after the game, "I can't rule that out."

But other players didn't agree that they were full of themselves.

"It's tough anytime you lose like that at home," said RB Thomas Jones, who had another strong game — 108 rushing yards and two TDs at halftime, 138 yards for the game. "We didn't take care of what we needed to take care of today. So it's definitely frustrating. We have four weeks left. The guys on this team, we'll all regroup, watch film tomorrow, see some things we can correct, correct them, and get ready for the next game."

The next game is San Francisco, the third West Coast trip of this frequent-flyer season. The Jets have not won in two trips to the state of California. The Niners, meanwhile, are coming off of an impressive, defensive, cross-country 10-3 win at Buffalo today. The Jets are no longer coming off of a winning streak. They'll be trying to extend their road winning streak to four. But that is not what will be on their minds for their first non-victory Monday in six weeks.

"Right now we can't think about streaks," said Thomas. "What we need to do is think about San Francisco, going out there being prepared and executing the game plan and getting things straight. Right now is not the time to think about streaks."

Here are the six highest yardage figures by an opponent in a Jets home loss: