JETS NEWS - SEPT 10

[Sperm Edwards]

First off, I'd like to thank JetFanFl for doing this for the past 2 weeks while I was unable to. Great job, man.

[Sperm Edwards]

New-look Jets kick off Eric Era

Sunday, September 10, 2006

By RANDY LANGE

STAFF WRITER

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Here in the state where they sing incessantly of "good old Rocky Top," the Jets start new today.

The fresh parts have been well-documented. The Jets take new offensive and defensive schemes into today's season opener against the Titans. They will be relying on a brand-new offensive line featuring three starters, two of them rookies, who weren't with the team last season.

They will put an offense on the field that for the first time since 1997 will not have "MARTIN 28" lining up at tailback. They will field an opening-day defense that for the first time since 1999 doesn't have "ABRAHAM 94" or "ABRAHAM 56" in the mix.

And for the first time since Herm Edwards arrived in 2001, the Jets under new coach Eric Mangini do not have a long-range perspective.

This is not to take sides on who's the better coach. As guard Pete Kendall, most definitely not new, said: "I'm not going to get into 'compare and contrast' because then it just looks like I'm either a suck-up or a bad-mouther. They're both very good coaches. They do things a little bit differently, just like any two human beings would."

Edwards encouraged his players to talk about what they planned to achieve, what their ultimate goal was, and that, of course, was playing in the Super Bowl. Unorthodox in the NFL, perhaps, but visualization is a proven technique for athletes and for many in all walks of life.

However, the Vince Lombardi Trophy decal that graced the wall of the media room to the right of the coach's lectern has been removed. And the actual hardware, for the Jets' Super Bowl III win that had a home under Coach Herm in a plexiglass wall case in the locker room, is back in its previous place of residence in the Weeb Ewbank Hall lobby.

Under Mangini, it's one day at a time with a vengeance.

"I've seen some comparisons to last season or projections for the future, and none of that really matters," he said in recent days. "What happened a year ago at the start of the season, it just doesn't matter. What's going to happen 16 weeks from now, it just doesn't matter.

"All that matters right now is today, the preparation for today, building on that really well and preparing for tomorrow. All that matters right now is Tennessee and that's it."

For some it is provocative to argue that Gang Green should view the Titans as a must-win game of sorts. The Titans are rebuilding like the Jets and eminently beatable. And the Jets could use the positive feedback a road win would provide heading into their home opener against New England (which Mangini always refers to as "the other place").

But the Jets just aren't going to go there. The team had some summer bumps along the way, but many of the players seem to have gotten over the tough practices and the penalty laps. They are warming to the task under their new boss.

"Coach has done an excellent job in preaching the details to us and being very thorough," said Chad Pennington, who against his long odds will start his third straight opener for the Jets en route to trying to start all 16 games for the first time in his career. "I think everyone feels comfortable with him being at the helm."

"Eric's a very sharp guy," said defensive end (and part-time nose tackle) Kimo von Oelhoffen, whose last game was for the Super Bowl-champion Steelers. "When you work as hard as he does, prepare as much as he does, you have to have confidence. He believes in himself. I believe in him. We believe in him."

And Kendall believes this season will be like all the others in his 11-year NFL career.

"Every year you're hopeful what the year will bring, excited to get started again," he said. "And I'm a little anxious to go out there and see what it's like again."

Let the Eric Era begin.

BRIEF: WR-KR Tim Dwight (thigh) was downgraded Saturday to out.

E-mail: lange@northjersey.com

[Sperm Edwards]

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

Let's rock!

By RICH CIMINI

DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER

Sunday, September 10th, 2006

NASHVILLE - During the dog days of training camp, when today's season opener against the Titans seemed like just a rumor, the Jets' dogged new coach gave his tired team a speech that was groundbreaking - in more ways than one.

Trying to illustrate the benefits of hard work, Eric Mangini showed video of an avalanche, from the early, ice-building stages to the ultimate breaking point. His message: This team can be the avalanche, an unstoppable force, if we continue to pile up the ice.

"He was saying we don't know when it's going to happen, but it's such a great feeling when it does come tumbling down," Laveranues Coles said. "He said he's been around to see it happen, being in New England.

"The system has been proven to work. Now, basically, that's what we're looking for - the avalanche."

Starting today, the wait begins to build. So does the weight.

For the sixth time in 13 years, the Jets are embarking on a new coaching era. This time, they've entrusted their future to a 35-year-old whose only head-coaching experience came 13 years ago in an Australian semi-pro league. Until eight months ago, Mangini was toiling in anonymity in Bill Belichick's cocoon.

Now it's for real, and everybody - fans, media, even the players in Mangini's locker room - are curious as to how he responds to the crucible of the regular season. Everybody wants to see if his grand plan, predicated on absolute devotion to the team concept, plays out on the field as well as it looks in his power-point presentations.

Mangini, showing no signs of letting up, pushed his team through a brutal training camp. It continued this week, with two training camp-like practices in full pads. To use his metaphor, they've piled a lot of ice. The question is, when will the earth start to move?

"I know I'm at the point where I'm anxious to see how it all plays out - and I want to see it happen fast," said Coles, expressing a sentiment shared by several players.

With Chad Pennington returning from his second shoulder surgery, new offensive and defensive schemes, and 23 new players, the Jets' avalanche may not happen until 2007, if ever. This is the most lightly regarded Jets team since 1996, Rich Kotite's final year. Some fans already are talking about the Brady Quinn derby, the race for the No. 1 pick in the 2007 draft.

Big picture aside, it's always important for a rookie coach to receive early validation, and a win over the Titans would be a huge boost to Mangini's program.

Conversely, a loss might leave some players wondering, but it wouldn't necessarily spell doom. A year ago, the Dolphins stumbled to a 3-7 start under new coach Nick Saban, then reeled off six straight wins.

"It's not just early success or late success, it's consistency," Mangini said. "It's building."

Mangini made that clear last month, with the Avalanche speech. Carrying out his training-camp theme, he ordered T-shirts for the players, with the word "Avalanche" on the front. On the back, it says, "Joining Together To Create An Unstoppable Force."

Cynics might say it's corny, that it's similar to Al Groh's flashlight fixation in 2000. The former coach distributed flashlights, telling his players that 53 flashlights shining together are brighter than one big light. It didn't work too well, as they ran out of batteries before the end of the season.

Will the same happen to Mangini?

"Eric's a straight-up soldier, a great leader," said recently acquired ex-Patriot Bobby Hamilton. "He's trying to get this team the right way. I don't care what happened with the history here. I know what he's about. He'll try to get this team back on the winning road, back to the Big Dance. I don't think they've been to the Big Dance since '68."

Smart guy, Hamilton. This year, the Jets are listed as a 100-to-1 shot to reach the Super Bowl. Jonathan Vilma, for one, isn't buying that perception.

"We feel we're a legitimately good team and can compete with anybody," he said. "To the media, it might seem like we're coming out of the ashes. To us, if we do get on a roll, it's expected."

A roll that could lead to an avalanche.

Vitals

THE LINE: Titans by 2-1/2

TV: Ch. 2 (Ian Eagle, Solomon Wilcots)

RADIO: WABC 770-AM, ESPN 1050-AM, (Bob Wischusen, Marty Lyons)

FORECAST: Partly cloud, high of 83. Showers possible. Wind at 8 mph.

Injury impact

The Titans will be without DE Antwan Odom (knee) and TE Erron Kinney (knee). Rookie RB LenDale White (ankle) is questionable, as is WR David Givens. White, the Titans' short-yardage specialist, did not practice Wednesday. Return man Tim Dwight (thigh) was declared out yesterday. Backup C Trey Teague is out with an ankle injury.

Feature matchups

C Kevin Mawae vs. DT Dewayne Robertson: With uncertainty at quarterback (all signs point to Kerry Collins starting over Billy Volek), the Titans will run as much as possible and this battle of former teammates will dictate how the game goes. Mawae has the physical strength to manhandle Robertson, the lynch pin of the Jets' new 3-4, and pave the way for the Titans' three-headed running game. It was something he did so well for the Jets.

WR Laveranues Coles vs. CB Reynaldo Hill: Chad Pennington may not recognize a lot of the offense he left last year but he does know Coles, his favorite target before his shoulder injury. Coles may also be the only playmaker the Jets have left. The Titans play a lot of man coverage and Coles should be able to use some double moves to his advantage, as long as Pennington has time.

Scout says

"The strength of the Titans' defense is up the middle so I wouldn't expect the Jets to get much going on the ground (they'll mix in some misdirection) and while injuries have hit the Titans' D-line hard, limiting the pass rush, Pennington doesn't have many downfield options to stretch the secondary. With two rookies starting on the O-line, he'll see his share of blitzes and have to rely on his short passing game to move the chains."

Intangibles

Not much is expected of either team this season, which makes it the perfect opener for both. At least there has been less turmoil at Eric Mangini's first training camp, where everyone has bought into the Patriots-based program. Not so with Jeff Fisher and the Titans, who are probably at the same point waiting for Vince Young as the Giants were with Eli Manning two years ago. Shaking things up late in the preseason by signing Collins, showing no faith in Volek, can't be good for the Titans.

Prediction

TITANS, 22-17, still have some strength on defense and should prevail via a turnover or two.

Hank Gola

[Sperm Edwards]

MR. GREEN'GINI

By MARK CANNIZZARO

September 10, 2006 -- NASHVILLE - Today represents a collective unveiling for the Jets as much as it is a season opener.

The opponent, the Tennessee Titans, almost doesn't matter.

What matters most is what the Jets bring to LP Field against the Titans at 1 p.m. One thing for certain they bring with them to this music city is a double-live album of questions.

They bring a rookie head coach in Eric Mangini, who had been a defensive coordinator for only one season but has a championship pedigree, having come from the Bill Parcells-Bill Belichick systems. They bring Chad Pennington as the starting quarterback despite coming off two shoulder surgeries in less than a year.

They bring a new running back, likely starting Derrick Blaylock, a former backup in Kansas City, and Kevan Barlow, a former starter in San Francisco.

They also come to Tennessee without Wayne Chrebet, a big part of their heart and soul who retired after last season. They come without John Abraham, their best pass rusher. He's in Atlanta with a new fat contract.

They come with a group of rookies who figure to play a prominent role in the team's success this season - for better or worse. Two of those players are first-round draft picks and starters on the offensive line -LT D'Brickashaw Ferguson and C Nick Mangold.

The Jets come, essentially, as an unknown product. They're projected by a widespread amount of so-called experts around the league to be a four- or five-win team. The Jets, of course, don't want to hear any of that.

Mangini, at age 35, is the youngest head coach in the league, but he carries a certain confidence level with him that belies that of a rookie coach trying to find his way.

"I am excited about it," Mangini said. "There has been so much work, time and effort to get to the point where we are at the start of the season and I am excited about it, the players are excited about it. It is obviously a great milestone personally.

"The players have worked incredibly hard to get to this point. The way that they have prepared, they have created an opportunity to be successful in the game. At the end of the day, you have to execute on that opportunity, and that is what we are working toward [today]."

Mangini is not Herman Edwards. In many ways, he's the anti-Edwards, the polar opposite of the Jets' head coach the last five years, really. Whether or not that ends up being good, bad or indifferent for the Jets will play itself out beginning today.

Edwards spoke to the team from the heart with no notes. Mangini's message sounds like it'll be a reiteration of things he has hammered home since training camp began.

Asked what he might say to the players before his address to the team last night, he said, "A lot of my messages are consistent. I have said the same things throughout the preseason, and they are things that I believe in - core Jet values. It is what we stand for, like doing your job first and trusting that the guy next to you is doing his job.

"Communication; that is going to handle any problem that comes up and if we are wrong, we are all wrong together. It is focus. That play, that meeting, that workout, that practice, and in conjunction with that, the five-second rule regarding moving on; the next play is the most important play. It is about finishing, finishing plays, finishing drives, finishing games. That is what I believe in and what, organizationally we believe in. Those are our values."

Those values will be on display today for the first time. How successful the Jets are in living up to them remains to be seen.

mark.cannizzaro@nypost.com

PREDICTION

The Jets will be competitive and keep this close, but Tennessee has a little more experience and is at home, and that should make the difference. The Jets, lacking any offensive firepower, have too many things that have to go right for them to succeed. - Mark Cannizzaro

TITANS 21 JETS 16

[Sperm Edwards]

FOR TODAY, GO AHEAD AND DREAM

By MIKE VACCARO

September 10, 2006 -- NASHVILLE - At the end of the day, the Jets really may be as bad as they are expected to be, as outmanned as they appear to be, as destined for desolation as they seem to be.

But at the end of this day, they have a chance to be undefeated, with their spirits unbowed and their record unblemished. In a season that, as much as any other in team history, seems certain to be defined almost exclusively by small increments of progress, that's a blessing beyond measure.

And that's not only a testament to the fact the Tennessee Titans are one of the few NFL teams this year whose present prospects are even more modest than the Jets'. More specifically, more relevantly, it's a reminder that while we generally concede all the purple prose and pageantry of opening day to baseball - so much so that it's the one sport that merits capital letters, the better to keep "Opening Day" sacrosanct - in this Jets season, opening day couldn't possibly have arrived fast enough.

The eight months just past have been a jumble of so many emotions, so much flux, so much transition. Herman Edwards fled, something that sparked initial anger, resulting fury, and ultimate "good riddance" among the most ardent precincts of Jetsville. There were the stumbling final days of Terry Bradway, when it finally occurred to everyone just how completely the Jets had squandered the past few years, an era that should have yielded so much more than it did.

There was an ominous sense for a while that Woody Johnson, as well-intentioned as he might well be, was settling into one of those maddening laissez-faire ownerships, failing to act with an assertiveness so essential to vital franchises. And then a stunning reversal, when he finally swept Bradway aside, handed the keys to the kingdom to Mike Tannenbaum and Eric Mangini, and decided to take the idea of a "youth movement" as seriously as it's ever been taken in professional sports.

Smart Jets fans understand that things are better on opening day 2006 than they were on opening day 2005, even if just 12 skinny months ago there was legitimate reason to believe the Jets could push for the AFC berth in the Super Bowl that ultimately went to the Steelers. That optimism lasted as long as it took the Chiefs to throttle them in Week 1, an assault for which the Chiefs cleared their conscience months later by agreeing to take Edwards off the Jets' hands.

As egregious as last season was, though, it should reinforce the constant lesson of the NFL: a team can be reinvented in a hurry. It may not happen in an eyeblink, the way the Jets contender-to-calamity collapse did in '05, but it can happen. And nothing enables that brand of thinking better than opening day.

Or, as master philosopher Charles Barkley once said of the early part of a season: "The bad teams don't know yet that they're supposed to be bad."

Bad, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. The hints we've gotten from the preseason tell us the Jets are going to struggle mightily to score points, they are going to be a nuisance defensively, they are going to play a lot of 14-10 games, they aren't likely to get blown out very often - take the under early and often - and they are going to be easy to root for, easy to follow, easy to adopt.

Other realities are more sobering: the omnipresence of the Patriots, and the rapid resurrection of the Dolphins. A schedule that does them no favors (they could play as well as humanly possible and still be staring at 2-4 after six weeks) is another sinister conspirator. And there is Curtis Martin in street clothes, as sad a site as there is.

But today, none of that matters. For Jets fans, it's OK to steal the uppercase letters and declare it Opening Day. You should be excited. You should be ready to embrace this team. You should be eager to welcome back Chad Pennington, to encourage the kid linemen, to see just how frugal the defense can be. There may be no Super Bowl aspirations hanging anywhere in the picture this year, but there's no crime in that. In fact, sometimes, these are the most enjoyable seasons of all.

michael.vaccaro@nypost.com

[Sperm Edwards]

NEW TERRITORY FOR ROOKS

By MARK CANNIZZARO

September 10, 2006 -- JET NOTES

NASHVILLE - When Nick Mangold, the Jets' rookie center, was asked if he felt ready for his NFL debut today, he said honestly, "We'll see."

Mangold doesn't know how he'll respond to his first pro experience and neither does fellow first-round draft pick, left tackle D'Brickashaw Ferguson, who's also starting.

"It's something you're just going to have to do," Ferguson said of being a first timer. "There's only so much you can envision. After I play, then I'll know. This is what we've practiced for and prepared for. I'm thankful for where I am, but right now my nose is still to the grindstone. I'm just trying to improve.

"Now is not the time to reflect at all [on accomplishments]. The season hasn't even started. In the off-season I'll reflect. I'm very appreciative and glad I've accomplished lot, but this is a working time, not a reflecting time."

Asked if he feels ready, Ferguson said, "Because I haven't gone through it, I can't really tell you. But I feel confident in what I know."

*

Just because he's the same age as his head coach, don't rule out Bobby Hamilton becoming a leader of this Jets' defense. "He's a special guy," 35-year-old Eric Mangini said of Hamilton, whom he's coached before and signed last week. "I love Bobby's fire. I love his passion. I love the way that he has - his toughness, his inherent strength. Here is a guy that just worked his way into the league and worked his way into the starting lineup. That's his trademark, that work ethic, toughness, energy, enthusiasm. And he's not a young buck any more, but you'd never know it. So the old guy can still play. I really like all of the characteristics he brings."

Hamilton, who began his career with the Jets after two seasons in the World League of American Football, spent the last two seasons with the Raiders.

*

Today marks the 35th time in the Jets' 47-year history that they open the season on the road. Since they moved to Giants Stadium in 1984, the Jets have opened at home only six times, including only three times in the last 14 years. . . . WR Tim Dwight (thigh) is out today. . . . The Jets are 19-27 on opening day and have a current two-game losing streak on the road. Their last opening day win was the 37-31 OT win over the Bills in Buffalo in 2002. . . . The Titans have a 20-14-1 record against the Jets. . . . The Jets open their home season with a game against the Patriots next Sunday at Giants Stadium. Let the apprentice (Mangini) vs. the mentor (Bill Belichick) hype begin.

[Sperm Edwards]

Pennington can start answering questions today

Sunday, September 10, 2006

BY COLIN STEPHENSON

Star-Ledger Staff

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Chad Pennington insists his shoulder is fine. He has answered the questions about his twice-surgically repaired rotator cuff over and over all summer, and, quite frankly, how many more ways can he say that physically he feels good?

So, with the Jets set to open their 2006 season today in Pennington's home state of Tennessee against the Titans, the quarterback isn't interested in talking about his shoulder anymore. Football questions only, please.

"I think making it through the first preseason game and being able to play in that was the first part of the whole process," Pennington said. "Now I'm just focused on performance and what I need to do to help this team win. At the end of the day, that's the bottom line. I guess you could say the 'feel-good' story's kind of over now. It's about winning games and making sure we're doing everything necessary to help us win."

Of course, Pennington is right about winning games, and that is exactly why Jets fans still have to wonder about him. Can Pennington -- now 30 years old, never blessed with the strongest arm to begin with, and coming off two career-threatening shoulder operations -- still help the Jets win games?

A year ago, when he was coming back from his first shoulder surgery, Pennington said all the same things throughout the preseason about his shoulder. Then he went out in the season opener and fumbled six times in an embarrassing 27-7 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs. That game set the tone for a disastrous 2005 season in which Pennington would suffer a second tear in his rotator cuff in Week 3.

By season's end, Pennington and 11 other Jets -- including running back Curtis Martin, backup QB Jay Fiedler and two starting offensive linemen -- would finish the year on injured reserve. And the Jets, who harbored Super Bowl aspirations at the start of the season, went 4-12.

Expectations are not high this season. The team has been radically altered. There's a new coach, Eric Mangini; a new general manager, Mike Tannenbaum, and -- for at least the first six weeks -- a new running back. Derrick Blaylock is expected to start over Kevan Barlow and Cedric Houston, with Martin on the physically unable to perform list.

There are also rookies -- first-round picks D'Brickashaw Ferguson (left tackle) and Nick Mangold (center) -- starting at the two most important positions on the offensive line. Add to that a new 3-4 defensive scheme that Mangini brought with him from New England.

But with the multitude of questions surrounding this team, the biggest ones are about Pennington. How strong is his arm, really? What are the odds he'll stay healthy behind a rebuilt offensive line? And without Martin in the backfield, will Pennington be able to get the ball consistently into the hands of wideout Laveranues Coles, the team's one true offensive threat?

Coles, who had such great chemistry with Pennington back in the 2002 season, when both had breakout years, claims he's not worried.

"I'm very confident in him," Coles said, emphasizing that his friendship with Pennington means more to him than the state of Pennington's shoulder. "It's not about the confidence I have, it's the confidence he has in himself. That's the most important thing. As long as he displays that, it's not only me, but everybody else on this team is going to have confidence in him, too."

Pennington, who missed the second preseason game after his father had a heart attack (his father is recovering now), completed 58.8 percent of his passes in the preseason (20-of-34, for 179 yards, in two games). He was sacked three times, hit numerous others, and seemed to handle the physical stuff well enough.

But in 10 possessions, Pennington led the Jets to zero points, and, for what it's worth, no victories. The Jets lost both games he started and won the two games he didn't play.

Of course, in the preseason, the numbers don't matter. They don't start to matter until the real season starts, which for the Jets is today in Nashville, Tenn., about three hours away from Pennington's hometown of Knoxville.

And the truth is, it doesn't matter how many times Pennington has been asked about his shoulder. He couldn't really answer those questions before today.

[Sperm Edwards]

JETS GAMEDAY

Hey, you never know

A number of NFL teams have looked as if they were in for long year but wound up in Super Bowl, providing a reason to dream before opening game

BY TOM ROCK

Newsday Staff Writer

September 10, 2006

Will the Jets get to Super Bowl XLI?

Almost certainly not. But if you ask players and coaches who have advanced to The Big Game with other teams in other seasons, you never can tell.

There were, apparently, no sure signs of greatness that lay 22 weeks away when those teams broke training camp, no gut feelings about pending trophies or rings.

So as the Jets head into the 2006 season opener in Nashville on Sunday, there is no way to anticipate whether the season will end in misery, mediocrity or Miami.

Sure, the Jets are weighed down by disadvantages (among them: an unclear hierarchy at running back and a quarterback who is one awkward hit away from a third shoulder surgery). But in the everyone-has-a-chance culture of the NFL, not even the teams that have won titles in the past were sure about their chances.

"It was just a matter of making the plays when we needed to," said Jets defensive lineman Kimo von Oelhoffen, whose Steelers won the Super Bowl last February. "We had a team that nobody ever quit. And then you work everything out in between."

It's that simple? Maybe.

"In 2001, we didn't start off very well," Jets coach Eric Mangini said of the season in which the Patriots, with Mangini as a defensive backs coach, won the first of three Super Bowl titles in four seasons. That slow beginning included an 0-2 start with a 10-3 loss to the Jets. But Mangini said whether a team is looking for its first title or is defending one, "All that matters is that day, that meeting, that practice. When you start stringing those things together, the progress and success comes."

Defensive lineman Bobby Hamilton, who played for the Patriots in two Super Bowl seasons and was a late acquisition by the Jets from the Raiders, said he had the same optimism heading into the regular season, whether it was defending the crown with New England or preparing for imminent disappointment with Oakland.

"It was just like everybody," he said. "Everybody is 0-0, everybody dreams of going to that big game and is trying to get focused on going in that direction."

Jets cornerback Andre Dyson, who started in Super Bowl XL for the Seahawks, said he could pinpoint the moment that team started to believe it could contend for a championship. And it wasn't heading into Week 1.

"Every year everyone has their favorites and picks, and last year in Seattle they were saying that Arizona is an up-and-coming team and the Seahawks can't beat St. Louis," Dyson said. "We were picked third in our division going into the season. But in the fifth week of the season, Seattle went to St. Louis and won. Once we got over that hump, everyone's confidence level went up and we won 10 straight."

So a team doesn't have to be ready for the Super Bowl to begin a Super Bowl season. There are a lot of pieces that go into the long, arduous trail to the final game of the year, some of them picked up along the way. Some are based on luck. Others are based on skill. Then again, some elements need to be in place.

"We had good football players and great coaches and we had them for five years," von Oelhoffen said. "We went to three AFC Championship Games. It was just a matter of finishing."

Which, if nothing else, is a great place to start.

Dwight out. Wide receeiver Tim Dwight (right quadricep) has been downgraded to out for today's game. He practiced all week after missing the previous two weeks with the injury.

Jets vs. Titans

Sunday, 1 p.m.

TV: Ch. 2

Radio: WABC (770), WEPN (1050)

[Sperm Edwards]

DB David Barrett (hip) is listed as questionable and LB Matt Chatham (foot) probable for the Jets in Week 1 at Tennessee.

[Sperm Edwards]

Mangini’s World Starts New Each Day

By KAREN CROUSE

Published: September 10, 2006

NASHVILLE, Sept. 9 — Do not ask Eric Mangini, the Jets’ first-year coach, for any predictions for the 2006 season. The projected records and predicted finishes that pass for reporting this time of year mean nothing to him. The 35-year-old Mangini treats them about as seriously as he would the latest alien abduction story in a supermarket tabloid.

Mangini did not become the youngest head coach in the N.F.L. by planning too far ahead. From his days as a low-level assistant for the Browns in 1995, he has lived in the moment. His philosophy can be summed up in a line from the Kris Kristofferson song “Help Me Make It Through the Night”: “Yesterday is dead and gone and tomorrow’s out of sight.”

Before the Jets can earn respect or a postseason berth, they have to play the Tennessee Titans in their season opener Sunday at LP Field. So that is where their focus will begin and end.

Let the fans wring their hands over last season’s opening-day debacle at Kansas City or whine about when the franchise will join the ranks of contenders instead of the cursed. In any discussion of the Jets, Mangini regards things like the team’s 4-12 record last season as a non sequitur.

“None of that really matters,” Mangini said, adding, “All that matters right now is Tennessee.”

If only it were that straightforward. Since being crowned Super Bowl champions at the end of the 1968 season, the Jets have appeared in two American Football Conference title games. In Mangini’s lifetime, the franchise has won two division titles and endured 17 losing seasons. Sometime during the lean decades, a can’t-do culture took root.

When Herman Edwards became the coach in 2001, he tried to transform the culture by changing the team’s mind-set. Instead of setting low expectations so as not to let anyone down, Edwards talked up his team’s potential, making the Super Bowl a stated goal.

Mangini, who won three Super Bowl rings as an assistant under Bill Belichick in New England, brings a poker face to the table. He may like his hand, but his enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that he cannot control the cards that others are holding.

Besides, Mangini has seen firsthand the folly of trying to forecast N.F.L. fortunes. Not much was expected of the 2001 Patriots, who added 24 new players after finishing last in the A.F.C. East for a second season in a row. After starting 1-3, they won the Super Bowl.

Mangini said what he learned at Belichick’s knee was this: “All that matters is that day, that meeting, that practice. When you start stringing those things together, the progress and the success comes.”

The grease board was made for coaches like Mangini, for whom nothing is written in indelible ink. He chooses to list his players alphabetically on the depth chart, the better to drive home the point that nobody’s destiny is fixed. The underused player this week — running back Cedric Houston, for example — could be the workhorse next week.

Injuries can recast a depth chart, as the Jets discovered last season when they finished with a dozen players on the injured reserve list. But so can initiative. Every week is a new opportunity for a player to make an impression. The snapshots of this season will reflect the digital era, with images constantly being erased to make room for new ones.

Focusing on the moment means that the rookie left tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson can forget about the three false starts he made during the preseason and play in a way that validates the Jets’ decision to take him with the fourth overall pick.

It allows defensive end Bryan Thomas to forget the boos that greeted him when he was drafted in 2002, and the negative commentary that has dogged him since, and distinguish himself at outside linebacker in the new 3-4 defense.

It makes it possible to forget that the injured running back Curtis Martin is not in the Jets’ starting backfield for the first time in nine seasons, leaving a hole that will take four running backs — Derrick Blaylock, Kevan Barlow, Leon Washington and Houston — to fill.

It enables quarterback Chad Pennington to forget his six fumbles in the Jets’ 27-7 loss at Kansas City last season in circumstances that will be similar to this year’s opener — a road game, the debut of an offensive system and his first regular-season start after shoulder surgery.

Progress is a sensible, if not sexy, goal for a Jets team that is unveiling a new coaching staff, a new offense, a new defense and 22 new players.

Mangini said: “My goal is simply to make progress each week and to improve on the things that we did the previous week. To me that’s the important thing, to constantly be taking steps forward.”