How could you not love this weekend if you love football?
Unless you're a Jets fan, of course.
Sandwiched by winning games from the Manning brothers, Week 16 had it all -- a playoff clinch from a team we left for long-term rebuilding last summer (Atlanta), a team continuing a rise from the coffin (San Diego) while another sinks into despair (Denver) , the weirdest turnaround in the star-crossed history (and this is saying something) of the New York Football Jets, the amazing and deep Tennessee defense beating almighty Pittsburgh with a front not including
Vanden Bosch and
Haynesworth but with guys named
Hayes, Brown, Jones, Ball and
Gordon, and the emotion of
Craig Stadler's
Mike Holmgren's last home game in a city where he revived pro football.
But my favorite thing of Week 16 is what it leads to: the ultimate revenge game, from the most gentlemanly NFL player of our time,
Chad Pennington. He kicks off my little review of the week that was.
You saw this happening on that dark August night in Cleveland, didn't you, Chad? "I have to say this,'' Pennington said, and it was hard to hear him above the din from the Dolphins' happy voices on the charter as it prepared to leave Kansas City last night. "My wife and I talked about this around midseason. We said to each other: 'It's going to come down to the last game. It has to. There's really no other way.'''
Miami (10-5) needs to win at the 9-6 Jets on Sunday for the strangest division title in its history. Strange, because Miami was 1-15 last year, and because the Jets had this division copped a month ago after they won at New England and Tennessee in successive weeks, and because the Jets have lost three of their last four -- three games they were favored to win. And because Sunday brings Pennington back to Giants Stadium, where he quarterbacked the Jets for much of eight seasons before being benched for
Kellen Clemens in midseason last year, and before being released by the team this year to make way for
Brett Favre.
I'll tell you the most amazing thing: In the last week or so, I've actually heard callers to New York sports-talk radio saying they wish they had Pennington back. Instead of Favre. And if you'd heard the same callers (or from the same ilk, at least) shoveling dirt on him last season and preparing the ticker-tape for the Welcome Brett parade in August ... well, let's just say this is one of the most interesting stories, and turnarounds, in recent sports history. Favre under-throwing receiver after receiver in Seattle and playing mediocre football for the past month while the Jets burned, with Pennington piloting an 8-1 Miami run to the doorstep of the playoffs. Now, if Miami wins Sunday at East Rutherford, the Dolphins win the AFC East and host a wild-card game. The only way the jillionaire Jets make the playoffs is with a win and either a New England loss in Buffalo or a Baltimore loss to Jacksonville.
"Only fate would have it this way,'' Pennington said. "It what's great about sports -- it always comes to something like, or at least it seems that way. To have it come down to the final game, in New York, well, it's amazing.''
Pennington was released by the Jets when GM
Mike Tannenbaum engineered the trade for Favre. He was told about the release at 11:30 on a Wednesday night at the Jets' hotel in Cleveland before the preseason opener he was going to start. He was on a plane home to New York the next day, and in Miami 48 hours later, a Dolphin.
He told me he hadn't been back to the New York area since that Saturday in August. His wife handled all the house closings and business aspects of his move. "My wife is absolutely amazing,'' Pennington said. "She took care of everything on the move. We'd just bought a house in New Jersey because the Jets were moving the complex out there [from Long Island], and we had to eat some cash on that move, but we were able to sell. This will be my first time back.''
Pennington said he would "try everything in my power to stay calm and focused Sunday. The first game we played against them, in Miami, helped me out a lot because I got the chance to see a lot of people who I'd known for a long time.''
Bitterness? He's got to have some, but he's never let it bubble to the surface. He won't now. "Well, if you rehash it and think about it, getting released definitely hurts,'' Pennington said. "You're on a team for a long time, and it's always one for all and all for one, and one day you realize they don't want you anymore after being on that team for so long. There's an emotional part to football and a business part, and the emotional part hurts, but I understand the business part. But instead of throwing a pity party about it, I choose to go play football and move on.''
Pennington had no choice midway through the third quarter at Kansas City, as the somnambulant Chiefs woke up for a weekend and took a 31-24 lead with nine minutes left. The 15 or 20 friends and relatives in the stands got excited. Then Pennington and that Wildcat Formation took over. The Dolphins went 60 yards in five plays to tie it, and in the fourth quarter, Pennington went seven-of-seven on a 13-play, 85-yard drive covering more than eight minutes. His 14-yard pass to new BFF
Anthony Fasano (Pennington, in New York, and Fasano, in Dallas, were both drafted by
Bill Parcells) made it 38-31.
Only in the NFL. Now Pennington, making a late run at the MVP, plays the game of his life. I was surprised the NFL made Denver-San Diego the prime-time game in Week 17 for NBC. Miami-New York, and Pennington-Favre, is the game of the week.
