Revved-up football players will be easy to find this weekend in New Jersey.

Good ones...well, that could be another story.

The Kansas City Chiefs and New York Jets will tangle amid the Manhattan shadows in East Rutherford on Sunday afternoon, with each team hitting the field behind a man known as much for pre-game fire and brimstone as for converting that enthusiasm into success once the whistle blows.

The Chiefs invade the swamps under the guidance of Herman Edwards, who's managed all of 14 wins in 38 games since controversially bolting the Jets' flock at the end of 2005 - following a 39-41 run over 80 games and five seasons with Gang Green.

The teams agreed to a deal that precluded any tampering charges being filed against Kansas City, in which the Chiefs gave the Jets a fourth-round selection in the 2006 draft that was eventually used to select running back Leon Washington.

Of course, more so than any of the 53 regular-season victories or two more he's gotten in six combined playoff starts, the erstwhile Edwards is still recognized as much as anything else for the 2002 speech he delivered in response to a reporter's question after an ugly Week 8 loss at Cleveland:

"This is what's great about sports. This is what the greatest thing about sports is. You play to win the game. Hello? You play to win the game. You don't play it to just play it," he said.

"That's the great thing about sports: you play to win, and I don't care if you don't have any wins. You go play to win. When you start tellin' me it doesn't matter, then retire. Get out! 'Cause it matters."

Oh, just in case it matters, too... the Chiefs are 1-5 in 2008, last in the AFC West, and have scored 90 fewer points than they've allowed through six games.

Meanwhile, following his dubious departure, Edwards was replaced by comparative novice Eric Mangini, who picked up the tattered pieces in 2006 and assembled a 10-6 playoff team that got signature motivation each week from classic boxing videos he'd show on Saturday nights before games.

Noted fight trainer Teddy Atlas was occasionally brought in both to speak about preparation as well as work with the team on training that would aid in football pursuits - an approach that served Mangini well through the first- season honeymoon en route to a gutty postseason loss at New England.

Since then, however, the Jets have won just seven times in 22 games, including an embarrassing 16-13 overtime defeat at previously 1-4 Oakland last week that pushed Brett Favre & Co. back to third place in the AFC East, two games in back of the 5-1 Buffalo Bills and a single game behind the perennial division powerhouse Patriots.

Ominously, Favre was reported to have aggravated an injured throwing shoulder in Oakland, against whom only two of his 34 pass attempts traveled more than 20 yards in the air. The Daily News said one play in particular was "vaguely reminiscent" of one that cost Chad Pennington a torn rotator cuff.

"If the loss to Oakland was devastating, then a defeat at home to Herm Edwards this weekend would be fatal," New York Daily News columnist Filip Bondy said Monday.

"The Jets need to make hay against these rotten teams, the same way that the Giants have padded their record against a series of early-season patsies. If the Jets travel to Buffalo on Nov. 2 with a 3-4 mark - facing New England, Tennessee and Denver on the near horizon - all hope is lost."

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