With inclement weather headed back this way this weekend, the New York Jets could have some help slowing down the high-powered Patriots.

That's what some New York-area writers are saying today.

"It slows you down a little bit," Jets safety Kerry Rhodes said of rain and snow and how it affects an offense. "You look at it that way and it may be more of a pounding game. But they can run the ball, too."

"I want them to do what they do and we do what we do," Rhodes continued in a *Newsday *piece, "and we'll see what happens."

Wintry weather or not, the Jets feel they have a chance to knock off the unbeaten Pats Sunday.

"They're a powerhouse," LB David Bowens acknowledged of the 13-0 New England Patriots, "and it's likenobody is giving us a shot at winning — but us."

Oddsmakers have the Jets pegged as more than 3 touchdown underdogs.

"Yeah, it's a lack of respect from the oddsmakers," Jets linebacker Brad Kassell told The New York Times, "but we're not playing the oddsmakers. We're not playing those Vegas guys."

Given the recent acrimony (i.e., "cameragate") between head coaches Bill Belichick and Eric Mangini, the media can't get enough of that storyline for this game. But neither coach is saying publically that it will have any impact on their gameplans.

"Winning every week is important to us and it's no different this week in a sense that this is a division opponent that's won the division quite a few years now," Mangini said. "All the external things are things you can't focus on and can't look at because there's so much other work to do that's going to affect the outcome."

QUICK HITS

USA TODAY offers a recent timeline of the Pats-Jets rivalry.

The Boston Globe focuses on the play of CB Ellis Hobbs this season.

The Boston Herald, meantime, checks in with RB Sammy Morris, who's on IR recovering from his
season-ending sternum-clavicle separation.