Jets defeat Dolphins in Brett Favre’s regular season debut

It didn’t come easy, but the New York Jets held off a 4th quarter comeback attempt by the Miami Dolphins to prevail in the first regular season game of the Brett Favre era 20-14.  The Jets led 20-7 entering the 4th quarter but after a quick Dolphin TD they needed a last minute end zone interception of a Chad Pennington pass to seal the victory.

Favre, for his part, looked sharp in his regular season Jet debut.  #4 was 15-22 for 194 yards with 2 TD passes and no interceptions.  Dolphins’ QB Pennington, who was released by New York to make room for the newly acquired Favre, overcame a shaky start to finish with decent stats of his own going 26-43 good for 251 yards and two TDs.  His only interception was the game clinching miscue picked off by the Jets Darrelle Revis in the end zone.

In postgame comments, however, Favre forcefully pulled the spotlight back on himself.  He suggested that the game validated his decision to continue playing at age 38, and that he now felt a sense of identity with his new team:

"I know I made the right decision I'm a New York Jet. I don't know about a native New Yorkian, or however you say it. Hey, I'm happy to be a Jet."

Favre’s Jets will make their regular season home debut next Sunday against New England.  The game may have lost some of its luster with the season ending injury to Patriots QB Tom Brady, but will no doubt still be a high profile affair both locally in the NYC metro area as well as nationally.

The Dolphins, meanwhile, will travel to Arizona looking for the first win of the Bill Parcells/Tony Sparano era.  There’s pressure to at least be competitive fairly quickly to erase the bad memories of a disastrous 2007 season when the team went 1-15.  There were some positive signs in Sunday’s defeat, but they were undone by a defense that gave up big plays and an erratic offense that dug itself into a hole where they needed to come from behind in a last minute comeback drive that fell short.