EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Now that the Miami Dolphins have won the AFC East, completing one of the biggest and best turnarounds in modern professional sports, they should pause to thank those responsible for getting them here.
Would someone from the New York Jets please step forward?
Let's be honest, the Dolphins don't win the division without quarterback Chad Pennington, and Pennington probably doesn't wind up quarterbacking the Dolphins if the Jets don't fall in love with Brett Favre. But they did, and look what happened.
Pennington has the Dolphins in the playoffs one year after they were the NFL's bottom feeder, and his team has Pennington in the thick of the league MVP race. Yeah, I know, Peyton Manning probably wins it, but Pennington should be in the discussion.
"Chad is perfect for this team," said linebacker Channing Crowder after Miami's 24-17 defeat of the Jets. "You had all the talent in the world on offense, but you needed that rock -- that solid guy who's going to play.
"You don't need someone who's off-the-wall, crazy, spinning out and doing flips underhanded to people. Chad's not going to do that. Chad's going to throw the ball out of bounds. He's just so smart and conservative but he knows when to take his shots. And you love to play with a quarterback like that."
Gee, I can't imagine whom Crowder was talking about when he referred to quarterbacks who make underhanded deliveries, but I can think of one that made Pennington expendable. That would be Brett Favre, who wilted down the stretch as Pennington's play improved.
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| Pennington brings the noise to David Bowens and the Jets defense. (US Presswire) |
• The Dolphins won their last five and nine of their last 10. The Jets lost four of their last five and would've made it a clean sweep were it not for J.P. Losman's early Christmas gift.
• Pennington threw eight touchdown passes and one interception in his last five starts; Favre had two touchdowns and nine interceptions over the same period.
• Pennington's next stop is a playoff opener with Baltimore; Favre's next stop is an MRI on a sore shoulder.
I think you get the idea. The Jets made a mistake, and now they know it. They let one of the game's smartest and most accurate quarterbacks walk so they could acquire the charismatic Favre -- and while the idea looked good five weeks ago when the Jets knocked off previously unbeaten Tennessee, this is not an 11-game season.
So the Jets have to live with their error, and their error was this: They traded for a name, a future Hall of Fame quarterback, they hoped could play as he did a year ago when he took Green Bay to the NFC Championship Game. It didn't matter that he would turn 39, and it didn't matter that he was dreadful in two of his last three seasons.
