The crowd of 68,756 had come for a christening, a continuation of the humiliation their New England Patriots had doled out to the New York Jets just more than a month ago. What they got was a continuation, all right – a continuation of a Jets’ season that increasingly matches all their talking of the talk with the walking of the walk.

The score here Dec. 6, back in the regular season: Patriots 45, Jets 3. The score here Sunday, in an AFC divisional playoff game: Jets 28, Patriots 21, a role reversal that keeps Ryan – the profane and personable coach – and his tell-us-we-can’t-and-we-will lot alive for another Who knows what they might say in advance of their AFC championship game appearance in Pittsburgh next Sunday? They now have established that, regardless of their unorthodox approach – or perhaps because of it – they just might win.

“We talk because we believe in ourselves,” Ryan said. “I think that was where the talk came from. . . . You know, we’re not afraid of anybody.”

Now, maybe, teams will fear the Jets, the sixth and final seed in the AFC who have, in consecutive weeks, won in Indianapolis and New England. That thrashing against the Patriots on “Monday Night Football” seemed seasons ago by those late moments Sunday, after quarterback Mark Sanchez had thrown for three touchdowns, after the New York defense had baffled Patriots quarterback Tom Brady into uncharacteristic ineffectiveness.

The Jets sacked Brady a season-high five times. They constantly switched coverages, befuddling a player who might well be the NFL’s MVP but who now has been beaten, on his home field, in each of his last two playoff games. Indeed, Brady and the Patriots haven’t won a postseason game since after the 2007 season.

“He just couldn’t get a bead on us,” defensive end Shaun Ellis said. “He was expecting one thing. We showed him another thing.”

Masterfully mixed coverages aside, the seeds of the Jets’ victory came not only after their last appearance here – “a wake-up call,” wide receiver Braylon Edwards called it, and Ryan took a game ball from that event and symbolically buried it at the team’s practice facility – but in a speech Saturday night at the team hotel. There, former Jets defensive lineman Dennis Byrd – who suffered a career-ending neck injury in 1992, one that nearly cost him the ability to walk – addressed the members of the franchise he still loves.