Jets Time It Just Right

One day after the St. Louis Rams and Kurt Warner and Marshall Faulk all went down in an imperfect heap, the NFL used its Monday night stage to send them a three-word message.

Get Well Whenever.

If the Super Bowl is indeed for sale again, there will certainly be qualified buyers, two of which crawled over each other through a long night that became an early morning that became the sort of breathless game from which champions awaken.

Entering the fourth quarter, the one-loss Miami Dolphins led the one-loss New York Jets, 30-7.

Dave Wannstedt, the Dolphins’ coach, was growling. Lamar Smith, their running back, was steaming. Jay Fiedler, their quarterback, was flinging.

Fifteen game minutes later, the score was tied at 37-37.

Wannstedt was fuming. Smith was frozen. Fiedler was planted helmet-first into the ground.

And the Jets were dancing in disbelief, numb-handed Vinny Testaverde throwing touchdown passes to tackles and acrobats and rookies.

And seven game minutes later it was over, just as everyone figured it would be, the Jets intercepting two passes in overtime and eventually driving close enough for John Hall to kick a 40-yard field goal for a 40-37 overtime victory.

The local time was 1:19 a.m., more than four hours after the opening kickoff.

And everyone thought that baseball game across the river on Saturday night was long.

Wonder if Warner and Faulk were still awake.

Wonder the same thing about Daunte Culpepper and Randy Moss of the Minnesota Vikings, the league’s lone unbeaten team.

Here’s hoping everybody was watching, and understanding that this January is no longer a sure bet for anybody.

For a team whose players collapsed several times during the final minutes because of cramps, the Jets found enough energy to jog wildly around stunned, roaring, half-filled Giants Stadium.

For a team that ran so far so quickly more than four hours earlier, the Dolphins sure took a long time to trudge off the field.

Even after that amazing fourth quarter that included scores on all five of their possessions, the Jets still nearly blew it.

At the start of the overtime, with the Dolphins holding the ball and facing third down, Marcus Coleman intercepted Fiedler’s pass and returned it seven yards, into Dolphin territory.

But Coleman fumbled the ball back, giving the Dolphins another chance.

Not that it mattered. A few plays later, Coleman intercepted another pass, and this time smartly stayed down.

It didn’t take Testaverde long to move the Jets into field-goal range with everything from downfield passes to a cramping Wayne Chrebet to quick screens to Curtis Martin.

It took even less time for Hall to kick the field goal that put the Jets into first place in the AFC East, equaling the Oakland Raiders and Tennessee Titans for the best record in the AFC at 6-1.

Then Jet Coach Al Groh was even quicker with the cliche.

“I don’t think anybody said it any better than a fella who lived eight miles from here, wore pinstripes,” he said. “Yogi [Berra] said it ain’t over till it’s over. Certainly, our team believed, it ain’t over till it’s over. That’s what sustained us during the tough times.”

Nobody sustained better than Testaverde, who completed 36 of 59 passes for 378 yards and five touchdowns.

Not bad, considering he entered the game with only six touchdown passes while nursing a pinched nerve in his neck.

Darn good, considering in the first half he completed eight of 18 passes for 51 yards.

“Vinny really responded out there, called a lot of the plays, really hung in there,” Groh said. “I’ve got a lot of respect for him.”

Not that the coach, one of the few bosses unassuming enough to wear a gray sweatshirt on the sidelines on “Monday Night Football,” gave Testaverde a choice.

“I gave a performance at halftime that proved I didn’t think it was over,” Grosh said. “I sang them a lullaby.”

One not suitable for children, surely.

The Dolphins had scored 17 points in the first 12 minutes, then kept pouring it on.

Fiedler, the former Dartmouth star who Groh had once encouraged to quit, had thrown a touchdown pass and avoided trouble. Lamar Smith, whose status diminished last year in New Orleans when the Saints drafted Ricky Williams, ran for two touchdowns.

Like the scoreboard said in the fourth quarter, 30-7. “We pretty much got trampled,” Groh said. “You look at a boxing match, a guy gets hit that many times, a lot of times they stay down.”

Not the Jets. Not this year, not even without receiver Keyshawn Johnson and coach Bill Parcells.

Earlier this year, they came from behind in the final minutes to beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and New England Patriots.

Laveranues Coles started this comeback with a leaping 30-yard catch to start the fourth quarter. Then rookie Jermaine Wiggins caught a short pass for anothertouchdown.

Hall followed with a field goal and Chrebet caught a 24-yard touchdown pass between two defenders to tie the score with 3:41 to play.

Oh, yes, Fiedler then gave the Dolphins the lead on the next play with a 46-yard touchdown pass to streaking Leslie Shepherd.

“But we knew if we were going to go down, we were going to do down swinging,” Chrebet said.

And so they sang through a final, nine-play, 57-yard drive that ended with a three-yard touchdown pass to tackle Jumbo Elliott with 42 seconds left.

Then, overtime.

Hope everyone was watching.

“We’re not worried where we stand in rankings and all that stuff,” Coles said. “We just keep playing. Just keep playing.”

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.

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