MOVE OVER MIAMI

Jets 17, Dolphins 7 (NYJ: 1-1; MIA: 1-1)

Week One is a distant memory. The Jets are tied for first place.

A couple of weeks ago, leading up to the season opener, I think I wrote something to the effect of: the Jets will need their defense to carry them early in the year, while the offense works out its bugs. Clearly they needed a stronger effort from the defense last week against Kansas City, but the offense was a lost cause. Sunday's game against the Dolphins was more of what I think we can expect from the Jets in coming weeks - great defense, effective-enough offense, and hopefully by the end of the year the offense is even better. The Jets are going to be good this year - everything is going to be OK - but they aren't going to blow teams out, and the wins probably aren't going to be pretty - they'll be typical Jets wins...but the point is, they will get plenty of wins.

The Jets got a lot of help Sunday too. First of all, they beat the Dolphins, so they're 1-0 in the division. That's big. They can't lose division games in the first place - let alone to Miami. They'll have a tough enough time with Buffalo and New England. But both of those teams dropped to 1-1 with losses on Sunday - the Bills lost to the Buccaneers in Tampa Bay, and the Patriots lost to the Panthers in Carolina. I didn't see the Bills' win in Week One, but by all accounts they looked good. They didn't look good in Tampa. And the Patriots looked very vulnerable - a look that we haven't seen in a while. There are chinks in their armor...good news for the Jets.

The Jets' game against the Dolphins started ominously - the first snap from Kevin Mawae to Chad Pennington was dropped. Fortunately, it was negated by an offsides, and I'm sticking with the story that Pennington rushed the snap because he saw the Dolphins jump. But things quickly got better - the Jets drove 80 yards on 9 plays, scoring on a beautiful fade pass from Pennington to Laveranues Coles. The pass was even better because Pennington had a blitz coming at him - it looked like 8 Dolphins rushing - and he made the great play. 7-0, Jets.

The only bad thing about the first drive was that on Pennington's first successful snap from center, the crowd cheered, and they did the same on the first shotgun snap. That's slightly embarrassing.

The Dolphins' first drive was just as effective - they drove right down the field on the Jets, but the Jets tightened up and stopped Miami inside the 5-yard line. Olindo Mare lined up for a 20-yard field goal, and a bad snap resulted in a missed field goal. That's why I feel it would have been important for Herman Edwards to have challenged last week's touchdown by Priest Holmes - it clearly would have been overturned, and the Jets play strong inside the 10-yard line. They could have forced a field goal (or a missed field goal), and who knows what would have happened. But I should forget about Week One.

The defense played a great game - holding the Dolphins scoreless until the fourth quarter. They got much better pressure on the quarterback (granted, it was Gus Frerotte), but they played very well. Mike Nugent had his first field goal - a 41-yarder with about a minute left in the first half, and special teams played pretty well overall. Ben Graham had a good game - and one of his punts - out of his own end zone - kept carrying, and was actually dropped by Wes Welker, pushing the Dolphins back to inside their own 40.

The other good news was right after the Dolphins touchdown the Jets put together their own very good drive - a drive which ended on a 1-yard touchdown pass to Jerald Sowell, making it 17-7 Jets. Pennington was 7-for-7, for 74 yards on the drive. A good sign. The pass to Sowell came off a great play action fake.

Pennington can't come out of the gate throwing bombs (and when I say bombs, I'm talking Pennington bombs). I think it takes him a few short passes to warm up in the game, before he can start unloading. Pennington is never goint to rifle the ball...what we saw on Sunday was typical Pennington - well-placed passes - some look floaty, but they're effective. If the Jets are going to win games, that's how they're going to win them. He's going to underthrow some receivers, but the more comfortable he gets, the less we'll see of that.

The bad news from the game was the Dolphins were constantly in the Jets' backfield. There was a lot of pressure on Pennington, and the running game was virtually non-existent. That needs to be fixed.

The Jacksonville Jaguars are up next at the Meadowlands. They played the Colts in Indy, and held Peyton Manning and company to just one touchdown in a 10-3 loss. There was plenty of running room for Edgerrin James, though, so we'll see if Martin has a breakout game next week. It's going to be a tough defensive struggle, I have a feeling, but the Jets should be able to out-defense the Jags. I feel better about the Jets' defense versus Byron Leftwich than I do the Jags' defense against Pennington. But more on that as the week goes on.

One last thing - this Sunday was my first experience with the Sunday Ticket. Outstanding. I needed to develop a rhythm, though, because it was tough figuring out which games to turn to to catch good game action. And Tivo was essential when the Jets were on, because if I missed a Jets play while checking out another game, I could just rewind and see what I missed. I need to improve my channel-changing though. I'll get better at it next week.