The professor, commanding the stage in the New York Jets' small theatre, begins his lecture on Thursday in Hempstead, N.Y. The subject is, not surprisingly, winning. Sunday's game against the Green Bay Packers comes down to two simple numbers. They're right up there on the big screen:

9-7

This, explains Herman Edwards, is where the Jets want to be -- need to be.

	Herman Edwards' record in regular season games as the Jets coach is 18-13.

"Generally, when I send messages, I try to alleviate the circumstances and just deal with the job at hand," Edwards explained later. "Obviously, the job at hand is to win a game, a home game and get nine wins."

Edwards' players will tell you that they usually already know what the second-year head coach tells them in his daily morning meetings with the players. It's just that he has this way of breaking things down into compelling pieces. Passion and perspective are his best weapons.

"I think it is very, very important for this organization, for this football team," Edwards said.

"To end the season on a winning note, and with that having the ability, if some things fall your way, to win the division or to become a playoff team…"

Considering the Jets' pathologically circuitous route to this place of opportunity, it would be a remarkable achievement. After winning the opener at Buffalo in overtime, the Jets lost four consecutive games. The first three losses were ridiculously one-sided -- 44-7 against the Patriots, 30-3 at Miami and 28-3 at Jacksonville -- and seemed to suggest that the Super Bowl hype heard in some quarters was just that.

New York managed to beat the Vikings 20-7 on Oct. 20, but a loss the following week -- 24-21 against Cleveland -- left the record at 2-5. With untested Chad Pennington now under center, it looked like a rebuilding year for the Jets.

The NFL world now knows, of course, that the Jets rallied. They have won six of eight games and find themselves, incredibly, in position to win the AFC East. Among all the strange permutations, this one is pretty simple:

If 8-7 New England defeats the 9-6 Dolphins at Gillette Stadium in a 1 p.m. game on Sunday, the Jets merely have to beat the Packers in their 4 p.m. game. This is not a far-fetched scenario. The odds-makers, who have been doing this for a while, are calling the New England-Miami game a pick 'em, while the Jets are actually favored over the 12-3 Packers by 1½ points.

This would leave the Jets, New England and Miami tied at 9-7. The Jets and Patriots would beat the Dolphins based on better division record than the Dolphins, while the Jets would win the division over the Patriots based on their superior record against common opponents. Even if the Dolphins beat the Patriots, the Jets could sneak in as a 9-7 wild card if Cleveland losses to Atlanta on Sunday (certainly a possibility) and one of the following occurs: a Kansas City loss or tie to Oakland or a Denver win over Arizona.

	“	I feel we are in a situation now where we're playing a very good football team at home. This is the kind of team we want to be playing at this time of the year. It is meaningful for us, meaningful for them. I think you find out about your team in situations like this. I think we will play very, very hard. ”
		— Herman Edwards, Jets coach

The looming question, however, is which Jets team will show up? Will it be the one that can't seem to handle prosperity, the one that produced a 19-13 victory over Denver on Dec. 8, only to lose on the road to a dreadful Chicago Bears team? Or will it be the team that recovered to soundly thump the Super Bowl champion-Patriots, 30-17, last Sunday night?

"I'll tell you, the team that rose to the occasion better show up," said Jets center Kevin Mawae, "because if we don't, then we won't make it to the playoffs. I know a lot of stuff has to happen, but if we don't play this coming week like we did last week, we've got no shot. We've gotta come out of there with our guns blazing and just go to town.

"We can't have a letdown like we did in Chicago, or like we did in Cleveland, because those are games we should have won. But, for whatever reason, we laid an egg. We can't do that this week."

Edwards deserves much credit for attempting to change the culture in Hempstead.

The Jets had 12 head coaches before Bill Parcells arrived in 1997, and none of them -- not even Weeb Ewbank or Walt Michaels or Joe Walton -- had a winning record. Parcells followed Bruce Coslet (26-39), Pete Carroll (6-10) and Rich Kotite (4-28) and won 30 of the 50 games he coached, pushing and goading the Jets all the way to the AFC Championship game in 1998. When assistant Bill Belichick checked out of the transition process, another Parcells acolyte, Al Groh, went 9-7 in 2000 before leaving for the University of Virginia. That's where Edwards, previously an assistant with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, came in.

Edwards squeezed a 10-6 season out of the Jets a year ago, featuring a muscular 24-22 victory at Oakland in the 16th game that lifted New York into the playoffs. Regardless of who wins the New England-Miami game, the Packers contest is a similar gut-check. After losing to Cleveland earlier this season, the 2-5 Jets rallied to crush the Chargers 44-13 in San Diego. Overcoming adversity -- often self-inflicted -- is becoming a Jets signature under Edwards.

"I feel we are in a situation now where we're playing a very good football team at home," Edwards said. "This is the kind of team we want to be playing at this time of the year. It is meaningful for us, meaningful for them. I think you find out about your team in situations like this. I think we will play very, very hard."

Greg Garber is a senior writer at ESPN.com.