That’s what happens when you make a crowd of starving football fans wait 54 weeks to catch their breath. This was the second half of the celebration that began 374 days earlier, when Aaron Rodgers sprinted onto the field at MetLife Stadium, American flag in hand.

There were 83,345 people there that night, and they were whipped into a frenzy. MetLife Stadium had never felt so electric. Maybe it was louder on the afternoon of Christmas Eve when Eli Manning found Victor Cruz for 99 yards, but that was cause and effect. On September 11, 2023, it was all about the buildup. All about the crescendo.

Then it’s all about silence.

Four snaps into the season, someone kicked a plug out of the wall. The power was only turned back on last night. This time, the crowd was 80,812. Finally, they had a chance to roar. Finally, they had a chance to growl. And the Jets gave them 60 full minutes to do just that. It ended 24-3, and it was as resounding a defeat as the score suggests.

“I love the roar, I love the roar,” said defensive end Will McDonald IV, who had two more sacks and a tackle for loss on the night and was part of a defensive ferocity that Pats quarterback Jacoby Brissett will watch in his sleep all weekend. “I love hearing it. We do it for them.”

The Jets scored three more touchdowns on Thursday night, the third straight game they’ve scored that many, and they hadn’t done it since… (looks at clock)… 1989. They hadn’t beaten the Patriots by that much since… (looks at clock again)… 1998, two years before the Patriots hired the Jets’ defensive coordinator for that 31-10 win, a guy named Bill Belichick.

So if this feels like something else, something different, that’s because it is. Opening night in San Francisco suddenly seems like a long time ago — even if it was only 11 days ago. The Week 2 trip to Nashville suddenly feels almost old-fashioned. The Jets didn’t play a perfect game, but it certainly felt perfect, like it had been a long time coming.

“It was a very special night,” Rodgers said after completing 27 of 35 passes for 281 yards and two touchdowns and making about a half-dozen throws that perhaps half a dozen quarterbacks of all time could have completed.

And on some of those throws that went a little too high, a little too low, or a little too far, his receivers were there and caught most of them as well.

(Funny how a quarterback with Rodgers’ pedigree inspires such sticky fingers; somewhere in Denver, Zach Wilson was probably shaking his head ruefully and thinking, “I could have used a little of THAT last year” …)

“A very significant week,” Rodgers said.

The Jets did too. They had a two-to-one possession advantage. They limited the Patriots to 139 yards, almost a third of which came on the 46-yard drive in overtime that ended the game. They were active and aggressive, constantly chasing the Patriots off the field.

“I thought they played really well,” Jets coach Robert Saleh said of his defense. “We’re talking about a style of play and a set play with relentless effort.” He accomplished all of that on Thursday.

And sure, maybe you can qualify that by saying it’s “just the Patriots,” who by all accounts should have been terrible early in the season. But then the Patriots went to Cincinnati and beat Joe Burrow and the Bengals two weeks ago. Last week they beat the Seahawks in Foxborough, Mass., letting them come back late and lose in overtime.

They were close to taking a 2-0 lead, and the Jets made them look like a sandbox team all night long.

“It’s only three weeks, buddy,” Saleh said, laughing.

But they have improved in each of those weeks. They are trending upward. They humiliated the weakened 49ers in Week 1, and even though the Titans threatened them in Week 2, they held their own tooth and nail. Thursday’s defense lived up to its reputation. And so did the quarterback, for that matter.

“He may not be what he once was,” Saleh said. “But he still has a lot to offer.”

Tight end Tyler Conklin (five catches, 93 yards) said, “We all know how great Aaron is. It’s so cool to see his progress every week. When we get to the middle of the season, I can only imagine what it will look like. He’s a Hall of Famer for a reason.”

There were expectations for this whole team, and for good reason. On Thursday, we got a tantalizing glimpse of what that might actually mean.