Then, for a golden handful of moments, they were back on both wheels, wreaking havoc, threatening to embarrass a bunch of Jets who couldn't even seem to put away a ragtag bunch reeling off a 1-15 season.

Then, here came reality, right in the kisser.

Chad Pennington, smoking-hot on five completions in six passes, cut loose toward an end-zone corner and silently prayed, ``Not now!''

He was thinking, dreading, interception.

''Not now!'' turned to brutally self-fulfilling prophecy. Pennington's pass landed directly in the belly of the Jets' Darrelle Revis.

Reality had returned. Final reality: Jets 20, Dolphins 14.

The Dolphins were the Dolphins again, game but outclassed losers.

I wish I could sound more cheerful. I know this is supposed to be objective, but I really do hate it when the Dolphins look so lousy for so much of a game, let alone a season.

SOME AFFECTION

You can't ''cover'' a team for going-on-43-seasons without developing some sense of affection. At least, if you could, I wouldn't want you covering me.

Sunday I felt for all the Dolphins but especially for Pennington, and for Tony Sparano, the brand-new head coach.

Sparano seems to be such a good man. He wasn't crying or laying anything off on the zebras. He was clearly ''disappointed'' but he was also ''proud of these guys fighting back.'' And it said a lot about Sparano's debut as an NFL chieftain when he said flat-out, ``I just love getting this thing going.''

Before Pennington threw the pick that broke so many hearts, the Jets did mean things to their old arch-enemies. The main one featured a more or less anonymous receiver named Chansi Stuckey swooping in from out of nowhere to grab a Brett Favre pass of 22 yards for the touchdown that flung the Jets ahead at 13-7.

If that had been a photo finish at a race track, it might not even have shown Stuckey.

That's how fast he came in at the last split-second. But it still counts six points.

To be sure, there are consolations. Even this bitter a defeat isn't quite as hard to take after we dodged that cannonball called Hurricane Ike. You compare football with an Ike -- no, you don't, unless you feel like comparing fun and games with terror, death, devastation.

Now, back to the realities, such as they are, of football.

After a rather bleak start, Pennington showed why he is going to be the Dolphins' most accurate passer since Dan Marino.

NO COMPARISON

That's not a comparison -- Pennington's arm is a popgun compared with Marino's. But the ex-Jet has a sure touch on short stuff, and he's bright besides. Bright enough, in any case, not to make a big to-do out of his five sacks. He's going to need all the help he can get from that offensive line, which also looks a little weak in its run-blocking.

Ricky Williams and Ronnie Brown are going to need more help than they got Sunday if that much-supposed 1-2 punch is going to be anything but blarney.

Wide receivers are in short supply, too. Greg Camarillo, Ted Ginn Jr. and Davone Bess between them caught only six of Pennington's 26 completions Sunday.

Those are only samplers. That's all you get in an opener, especially against a team as full of X's as the Jets. More deficiencies will manifest themselves soon enough. For today, when we are not giving thanks for the lack of Ike, the Dolphins clearly have enough weaknesses to make any thoughts of a winning season more dream than objective preview.

''We have 15 games left,'' Sparano said.

That's how many they had after the 2007 opener, too, and they lost 14 of them. I can't see another year nearly that bad, but I just cannot imagine this club as presently constituted winning any more than six games at the outside.

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