Not to diminish the importance of a young-gun quarterback's rise, but the surprising and rapid resurgence of the New England Patriots has more to it than merely a man named Brady.

Sure, Tom Brady has captured the hearts and rekindled the hopes of New Englanders with his ascent from a sixth-round/project backup quarterback in 2000 to the Patriots' 2001 season savior following a serious injury to starter Drew Bledsoe.

And sure, Brady's -- dare we say Pro Bowl? -- performance has been as much a part of the Patriots becoming a sudden contender in the AFC East as any factor.

	The trouble with Terry Glenn hasn't stopped the Patriots from staying in contention.

But give Patriots maligned head coach Bill Belichick and his staff credit for keeping the team together and allowing it to keep improving after Bledsoe was knocked out with sheared blood vessels thanks to a hit by Mo Lewis in a Sept. 23 loss to the New York Jets.

At that point, the Patriots were 0-2, without their star quarterback and a running game.

Any prognosticator worth his or her weight in betting sheets was predicting an automatic plummet to 3-13 or 4-12 for the Patriots.

But Belichick, his offensive coordinator Charlie Weis and the rest of the coaching staff had other ideas.

And now, two months removed from being 0-2 and losing Bledsoe, the Patriots and Jets are set to meet again Sunday and, incredibly, the game has major AFC East implications.

The Patriots have won six of nine games with Brady at the helm and are 6-5, poised to send the division into a chaotic free-for-all with a win over the Jets at Giants Stadium.

The Jets, however, are a smoldering-hot team in their own right, having won four in a row and six of their last seven. They stand at 7-3 and enter the weekend tied for first place with the Dolphins, against whom they've already swept the season series.

The Jets' mantra is this: Win out the final six games and clinch the No. 1 seed in the AFC for the playoffs, meaning home-field advantage for as long as they're alive until the Super Bowl.

A sweep of their final six games, which would include wins at Pittsburgh (8-2) and Oakland (8-2), would give the Jets a 13-3 regular-season record. That would be a franchise-high in victories. The Jets, by the way, are 5-0 on the road this season.

So they're feeling great about themselves, seemingly certain that they won't follow what has become common in franchise history and fade in December. The Jets, remember, sagged from 9-4 to 9-7 and out of the playoff picture last season.

"Our players realize what happened to them last year, because they were a part of it," Jets coach Herman Edwards said. "Do I think it motivates them? Yeah. Probably. But this team has got a good way about itself right now."

While the Jets have been on a feel-good ride, the path of the Patriots, though surprisingly successful, has been a bumpy one.

The Bledsoe situation has become a thorn of sorts, though to Bledsoe's credit, he has remained a good soldier and has vehemently supported Brady. Bledsoe, though, didn't like the way Belichick told him one week that he'd be able to compete for his job and the next announced he was sticking with Brady for the "foreseeable future."

Though Belichick conceded that he perhaps could have handled it with a slightly better touch, his move to stay with Brady and keep the positive chemistry intact was the right move -- even if it means the end of Bledsoe's career as a Patriot, which is likely.

There, too, have been some negative rumblings in New England over the ridiculous Terry Glenn situation.

Glenn, who has been at war with Belichick and the organization since training camp, when he missed a mandatory drug test and was suspended by the league, was finally suspended for this week by the team when he refused to practice. The enigmatic and talented receiver has played only one game this season.

He has spent most of his time embarrassing himself by not showing up for work, forcing the Patriots' hand to suspend him. Earlier this week, Glenn, who was listed as probable with a slight hamstring injury, refused to practice Wednesday.

Meanwhile, working his butt off on that same practice field in an effort to play Sunday was linebacker Bryan Cox, who was a month removed from a broken leg.

Glenn went on a TV show last Sunday and announced, "I do not see myself in a Patriot uniform next year. I will go to another team and make the minimum (salary)."

In a bizarre circumstance, Glenn then walked out of the TV studio and told a Boston Globe reporter how much he wants things to work out in New England because he likes it there and wants to stay.

Yikes.

The simmering Bledsoe-Brady controversy and Glenn situation have taken a deep back seat to the success of the team, though.

And lost in the Patriots' resurgence has been the running of Buffalo Bills castoff Antowain Smith, who has finally brought a consistent running game to the Patriots.

Smith enters Sunday with 721 rushing yards and seven touchdowns, and he's riding a streak of three 100-yard rushing performances in the past four games.

The Patriots' six wins this season have been a direct result of Smith's success. He has averaged 88.1 yards on the ground in six New England wins. Conversely, in the Patriots' five losses, Smith has averaged 38.4 yards.

The Patriots, too, have been doing it on defense, though with Belichick's brilliance it's like he's doing it with mirrors.

Former Jets castoff defensive end Bobby Hamilton leads the Patriots with five sacks. Former Jets castoff cornerback Otis Smith leads the team with three interceptions. Former Jets castoff linebackers Roman Phifer and Cox have performed well and led the team. Cox, in fact, is a team captain.

So this has been about more than that man named Brady.

Weis, the Patriots' offensive coordinator, credited Belichick with "holding the team together" during the roughest of stretches.

"That's the head coach," Weis said. "Bill has done a great job of holding the team together. When we worked for (Bill) Parcells, he did the same thing when Vinny (Testaverde) went down (to a ruptured Achilles' in 1999). Belichick has done the same thing with Drew going down. He's held the team together."

Fueling the Manning-Mora feud
Speculation has run rampant that Indianapolis coach Jim Mora cannot survive into the 2002 season without leading the Colts deep into the playoffs this season.

Mora, however, seems to have expedited his imminent departure with his conduct this past week, beginning with his public diatribe following the Colts' loss to the 49ers last Sunday and the subsequent ire it drew from Peyton Manning, the Colts' franchise player.

	Mora

	Manning

Mora, using the word "disgraceful," ranted about the number of interceptions the Colts have thrown and had returned for touchdowns. His words, because they were so public and so pointed toward Manning, angered Manning.

"He and I have had one-on-one talks before where he's gotten on me and I have no problem with that," Manning said. "It's just that it was national television. He's more or less busted my chops in front of the whole team and I can take it. I have thick skin.

"The reason I talked about (the diatribe) is because of how many times I've seen it -- Sunday, Monday, Tuesday (on TV). Sure, it bothers me. It just bothers me that what he said to us in that locker room has become the entire country's business. No, I don't like that."

During the week, Manning told the Baltimore media (the Colts play the Ravens on Sunday) the situation between himself and Mora was "ironic" because "I'm playing for his job."

The 4-6 Colts have lost three in a row and are 1-4 at home. They have to win five of their last six games to merely get to 9-7, which is unlikely to be enough to qualify for a playoff berth.

"Playoffs?" Mora ranted after last week's game when asked of the possibilities. "Don't talk about playoffs. Are you kidding me? Playoffs? I just hope we can win a game, another game."

Bills sink to new low
For the Miami Dolphins, last week's 34-27 comeback victory over the Bills in Buffalo might end up being their benchmark moment of the season. It might be the game that catapulted them into the postseason.

For the Bills, it'll go down as just another miserable moment in the star-crossed rookie season of head coach Gregg Williams.

The Dolphins had no right winning the game, which was led by the Bills 27-17 midway through the fourth quarter. But bad teams make bad mistakes and find ways to lose games. That's what the Bills did, beginning with a missed extra point and followed by a kickoff out of bounds, poor defense and finally a fumbled kickoff.

	“	I've seen a lot in 11 years, and this is a new low. ”
		— Phil Hansen, Bills defensive end

"It's beyond words," Bills veteran defensive end Phil Hansen said. "To come this short is a new low. And my guts are churning more because it was Miami. I usually consider myself very calm, cool and collected, but it was hard at the end for me. I've seen a lot in 11 years, and this is a new low."

"This is a bad one, and there's a little more of a sting there because it was Miami," Bills tight end Jay Riemersma said. "It hurts. The frustrating thing was a lot of the guys from the Dolphins said after the game, 'You worked us over pretty good today.' But you can't come away from that positive. You just have to win."

"We were whipping them up and down the field," Bills defensive tackle Shawn Price lamented. "To lose like that is absolutely horrible. I can't even put it into words. We're fighting. We're doing everything we can to win and we're just coming up short.

"I'm so frustrated right now. This is a hard, hard game to swallow."

The loss for the Bills was their eighth in a row at home, tying a franchise record.

Early in the week, the Bills released kicker Jake Arians, who began the collapse with a missed extra point with 8:16 remaining that kept the Dolphins within a touchdown and a field goal of a tie. Arians, however, was only a fraction of the problem.

Mark Cannizzaro of the New York Post writes an AFC notebook every week for ESPN.com.