Nose tackle Kris Jenkins called it something else: humbling.

"I can tell you one thing: feet are back on planet Earth," Jenkins said. "But it's part of the job. You have to roll with the highs and lows."

Sunday's 34-17 loss to Denver was among the Jets' lowest points of the 2008 season, rivaled only by the 16-13 overtime embarrassment in Oakland Oct. 19. The Jets responded to that defeat by winning five straight games, a streak that ended with a dramatic thud as the defense suffered a complete breakdown against the Broncos.

The Jets failed to mount a pass rush against Denver quarterback Jay Cutler, who responded by torching their suspect secondary, throwing for 357 yards and two touchdowns. The Jets also allowed an opposing team's running back to surpass 100 yards for the first time this season as rookie Peyton Hillis rushed for 129 yards.

But as bad as last Sunday was, when one takes a big-picture look at the Jets, they're 8-4 entering today's game at San Francisco, and they have a one-game lead over New England and Miami in the AFC East.

The Denver loss was damaging but hardly devastating. At least if the Jets use the defeat correctly, players said.

Veteran cornerback Ty Law didn't use "wake-up call" in describing the Broncos game, but he did reflect Jenkins' sentiments. Neither player, nor anyone in the locker room, thought the Jets were getting too full of themselves. But human nature is human nature.

"It's not going to get any easier for us, especially the way we played this last game," Law said. "So anybody can think they can beat the New York Jets right now. We have two great games against New England and Tennessee, two top teams in the league and then - I'm not saying Denver's not a top team because they're the leaders in their division [AFC West] - but people expected us to win that game."

Because the Jets did not win, Law said people might start thinking they're impostors as contenders. And he said his teammates should believe the same until proving otherwise, with today being their first opportunity to demonstrate that last Sunday wasn't representative of who or what the 2008 Jets are.

"Right now, we're basically a fluke, and I think that's what we need to think," Law said. "People aren't going to give us anything and I think we needed that , really, to get back to where we need to be. People were just giving us a little too much [credit] for what we are right now."

Brett Favre doesn't think anything approaching hubris infiltrated the locker room, but he did say that part of the inherent challenge of a winning streak and emerging as a contender is how opponents - and everyone else - begin to view the Jets. "You know, all of a sudden now [people] say, 'Hey, the Jets are pretty good, we have to play pretty good to beat them; let's knock them off,'" Favre said. "Kind of like us going to play Tennessee. So we are going to get their [opponent's] best, so we have to play our best."

Like Law, the quarterback threw in a cautionary note that applies to today's game and the rest of the games on the Jets' schedule. Said Favre, "We are not good enough yet to think that we can play average and get away with it."