Pennington Again Comes Through

Chad Pennington saved the New York Jets’ season again and Wayne Chrebet took a leap toward redemption.

The Jets kept their playoff hopes alive with a 30-17 win Sunday night over the New England Patriots, one week after they fell to lowly Chicago.

“Last week we didn’t think we were going to be breathing, but now we’re breathing,” said Pennington, who threw three touchdown passes and improved to 7-4 as a starter.

Chrebet is breathing a lot easier after his 15-yard touchdown catch gave the Jets a 27-17 lead with 8:45 left. In the 20-13 loss to the Bears, he lost a fumble deep in Chicago territory with about a minute left when he tried to jump over defenders.

“We’ve had games where we’ve made one mistake and the other team had none and they beat us,” Chrebet said. “Tonight, they had one.”

It came after the Patriots tied the score on the opening drive of the third quarter, a 16-play, 66-yard march ending with Tom Brady’s six-yard scoring pass to Christian Fauria. Then the Patriots forced the Jets to punt.

But Troy Brown fumbled the punt and Nick Ferguson recovered at the New England 19. John Hall’s 23-yard field goal, one of three he kicked, made it 20-17.

“It just kills you. It takes a lot of momentum from your team,” Brown said. “It’s one of the worst plays I’ve ever had in my career. It was just a bad decision” not to call for a fair catch.

The Jets were 1-3 behind Vinny Testaverde, including a 44-7 rout by the Patriots in the second week of the season. Then Pennington took over. Now New York is 8-7 and in second place in the AFC East behind Miami (9-6).

“We’ve come along too far to not say we’re going to finish it,” Jet Coach Herm Edwards said.

New York also had a strong ground game. Curtis Martin became the second NFL player to rush for at least 1,000 yards in each of his first eight seasons. Barry Sanders did it in his first 10 seasons.

Martin had 106 yards in 26 carries, pushing his total to 1,011 this season.