With Bill Parcells in charge, Dolphins no longer view a loss as a loss

MIAMI — A CBS camera was trained on Bill Parcells during the Miami Dolphins’ season opener Sunday. Parcells, the Dolphins’ executive vice president for football operations, showed no emotion as he watched his team’s 20-14 loss to the New York Jets from a suite.

What was he thinking?

It might have been: "I came back for this?" Then again, it might have been: "OK, so we’re not as far away as I thought we were."

The Dolphins offered some ugly, some bad and finally some good.

Even after the loss, which came down to the Jets twice stopping the Dolphins in the red zone in the fourth quarter, the Dolphins’ locker room was upbeat. For the 26 players who remain from last season’s 1-15 season, it didn’t feel like just another loss. This one had disappointment wrapped with hope.

"We have a lot of work to do, but we’re headed in the right direction," said receiver Greg Camarillo, whose overtime touchdown against the Ravens last season gave Miami its only victory.

At times Sunday, the Dolphins looked like, well, the Dolphins. They had only 91 yards in the first half. They had only 49 rushing yards the entire game. They gave up four sacks. They had a 9-yard punt, and a kickoff that went out of bounds.

The Dolphins gave their die-hard fans — empty seats were everywhere — plenty to boo.

"We didn’t play well enough," said Dolphins coach Tony Sparano, who was hired from the Cowboys. "…We made too many errors. You don’t win in this league with that many."

The Dolphins’ most egregious mistake came in the second quarter. With Jets kicker Mike Nugent having injured a thigh — and having missed a 32-yard field goal on the previous possession — the Jets went for it on fourth-and-11 from the Miami 22. Defensive end Randy Starks grabbed Brett Favre’s jersey, but Favre escaped and, just before Phillip Merling hit Favre, Favre threw the ball up for grabs.

It hung in the air for what seemed like forever. Yet, Jets receiver Chansi Stuckey somehow was the only player anywhere close to the ball. (You can’t argue with the Dolphins’ decision to pay more attention to Laveranues Coles and Jerricho Cotchery, considering Stuckey, a seventh-round draft choice in 2007, had never caught an NFL pass.)

Stuckey answered Favre’s Hail Mary, and in the end, the 22-yard touchdown pass was the six-point difference. (The two-point conversion failed.)

"You play enough of these games, and you see a play like that happen, and you know it’s going to come back to bite you," Dolphins defensive end Vonnie Holliday said. "In that fourth quarter, you’re looking at how much time is on the clock; you’re looking at the score. Just make that play. That’s not the whole game. ... We had a lot of areas in this game where we didn’t play well enough, but that play certainly sticks out and hurts you."

The Dolphins, though, still had a chance to make a victory out of nothing. They reached the New York 2-yard line with more than 9 minutes to play but failed to score, and after many fans had shown how much faith they had in their team by leaving, the Dolphins drove as close as the Jets’ 18 with seconds left before Darrelle Revis intercepted a Chad Pennington pass.

It was, in the end, a start.

"I’ve been on teams here in the past where when we stalled out, we had difficulty getting it revved back up," Dolphins running back Ricky Williams said. "We didn’t rev it up enough, but we didn’t quit."

When Parcells arrived in South Florida, he complained to friends about the lack of talent on the Dolphins. He said there were only a handful of players on last year’s roster with whom he could win. Most of them now are gone, with 27 new players on the 53-player roster.

More than just the faces have changed, though. The Dolphins no longer are resigned to losing.

"When we watch this one on film," Holliday said, "we’re going to beat ourselves up."