After as possum-ugly a game as the NFL will cringe to see, the Dolphins showed the one thing that would save their Sunday.

Grit. Guts. Heart. Desire. All the same.

Feel free to call the Dolphins' performance anything you like.

Ragged. Sloppy. Inartistic.

Just don't overlook the main thing. They gamed it when they had to game it. They brought it when it was time to bring it or walk away losers to one of the league's worst teams in their own ballpark.

Sunday's 25-23 melee in Land Shark Stadium should go down as one of Miami's top 10 -- or bottom 10 -- ugliest victories ever.

And it just might register as their gutsiest.

The Dolphins ``kept grinding,'' in overseer Tony Sparano's words, when they had to grind out the rumble that was coming from a Tampa Bay bunch that is pretty awful except for Kellen Winslow and a very few others.

Dan Carpenter's 25-yard field goal with 10 seconds left officially won it. He swung his leg just right.

THIS WIN COUNTS

The Dolphins swung their innards just right. Granted it doesn't say much for intrinsic talent when you need your last one-sixth of a minute to beat Tampa Bay in your own ballpark. But it counts.

It's the difference between being 3-6 and 4-5 today. It's the difference between a season hopelessly down the drain and one that still has a fighting chance to be respectable -- especially with games at Carolina and Buffalo coming up.

It looked like Chad Henne had thrown the game away when Quincy Black picked him with 1:43 left and the Bucs went on to a 23-22 lead. ``Chad made a poor decision,'' Sparano said.

Yes, Henne did that. But he came back swinging, 25 yards to Davone Bess, another 16 the same way, and then he sent Ricky Williams galloping for 27 yards to set up Carpenter's winning kick after a 77-yard drive.

Henne now carries only a mediocre 76.3 passer rating for this season. He had no great Sunday by statistical count, only 17 for 31 for 175 yards with that interception enabling the Bucs' 23-22 lead with 1:14 left.

What Henne did exactly right was keep his head. When he simply had to play error-free or suffer the disgrace only Bucs victims know, he did it.

I can't say I ever saw the Dolphins quit, in all the time since they were born in the old Orange Bowl in 1966. I also can't say I ever saw one that hung in there with such a tsunami of desire as Sunday's, such a wave of won't-quit that at least temporarily offset their lack of pure talent.

I also hate games that field goals dominate because I object to the principle of one man just swinging his foot and overwhelming everything that dozens of guys have spent their whole bodies trying to win. And this was a field-goal game, no mistake, Carpenter with four, Connor Barth with three.

But that's why they call it football.

One thing, again, you couldn't call Sunday was lovely in any way except the weather and the final score. It can't be pretty when the Dolphins need 59 minutes 50 seconds to beat a team that has won only one game.

``That [Tampa Bay] is a good 1-and-7 football team,'' cornerback Vontae Davis said.

A REALLY BAD TEAM

No it isn't. But every dog has his day, and the Bucs almost got theirs Sunday.

They sent Ronnie Brown off limping at the end after he gored them good, and if one of Ronnie's wheels is really hung up, the Dolphins are going to be in much deeper trouble.

A final few words about Winslow, if you will. For reasons known only to them, the Bucs didn't unleash him until near the end, and he almost took over the game. There aren't many tight ends more dangerous than this old Miami Hurricane, and there surely would have a dollop of irony in Winslow coming in here beating the Dolphins.

He caught six passes for 97 yards in just the late going. He is a monster talent. Be glad the Bucs didn't go to him earlier. And that the Dolphins finally had the gizzard to stop him in the bitter end of a game that often looked as primitive as the the 1920s.

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