New York Jets player tips his hat to the New England Patriots

New York Jets star safety Jamal Adams recently acknowledged just how impressive the New England Patriots’ dynasty has been.

There’s not a lot of love lost between AFC East division rivals New York and New England. The Patriots and the Jets have been duking it out for decades now, with the Jets enjoying more success in the early post-merger days of the NFL, and the Patriots obviously clearly having the upper hand for the past two decades.

That doesn’t mean that players from both sides can’t at least objectively take a step back every now and then and honestly evaluate their arch-rivals.

Jets safety Jamal Adams did exactly that while appearing on ESPN’s “First Take” program as a guest earlier this week. Per NESN’s Adam London, Adams was given the baiting question of trying to predict when the Patriots’ recent run of dominance would finally come to an end.

To his credit, Adams took a page out of Bill Belichick’s book and instead traveled the high road. While he could have easily projected New England’s imminent demise, he decided rather to praise New York’s bitter rival:

"“Well, obviously, hats off to those guys. Hats off to that organization. They’re well-coached, they do it right all the time and they do the little things the right way at all times. That’s what matters the most in this league. They finish in the fourth quarter. A lot of teams do not finish in the fourth quarter and they do an outstanding job in all three phases. So hats off to ’em. We just got to keep competing. Every time we compete against those guys we want to go out there and get a victory. But we got to play all four quarters on all three phases and we just got to give them a run for their money. We’re just looking forward to the matchup. Hopefully, it comes soon, but at the end of the day, we got to play team ball to beat those guys, man. That’s a tough group.”"

This actually isn’t the first time Adams has said something nice about the Patriots or their players. He also went on the record last April as saying he thought Rob Gronkowski would “be back” one day from retirement, even going so far as to say he wished it so, since he wanted more opportunities to compete against “the best.”

Of course, he also sent Pat Patriot, New England’s beloved mascot, to the hospital after a flying tackle at last year’s Pro Bowl. So perhaps Adams knows he needs to watch his P’s and Q’s around the Patriots a bit, lest he earn Belichick and Brady’s eternal wrath (or at least some major-league bad karma).