10/07 — The Jets got took the opening kickoff and rather than pounding from the start with Thomas Jones, they opened up with three passes that gained 4 yards. Brad Smith makes a nice tackle on PR R.J. McQuarters.

But the Jets defense opens up impressively. Dewayne Robertson pushes his double-team block back into Eli Manning, who dishes off an underhanded incompletion to former Jets draft pick Derrick Ward. Then they stop Ward. Then a nice blitz had Bryan Thomas coming free up the middle, with Manning getting the pass off for TE Jeremy Shockey — with S Eric Smith, playing for the deactivated Erik Coleman, making the diving pass breakup. Three-and-out. Promising beginning for the D.

The Jets show some pizzazz in picking up their first first down when Chad Pennington looked to be communicating the play call to Smith when Nick Mangold shotgun-snapped the ball not to Chad but to Leon Washington, who took the snap 10 yards around left end. Nice play. But then the Jets bog down at midfield, and on fourth-and-a-half-yard, Pennington tried to draw the Giants' vaunted DL offside. It didn't work, so the Jets take the delay of game.

That sets up Ben Graham's second punt and his first drop punt, and he's been hot with his end-of-end specialty. McQuarters lets this one bounce over his head, and it bites at the 10, with Wallace Wright downing it at the Giants 8. That's five Graham drop punts in a row downed inside the 20 and two straight inside the 10.

This next Big Blue series ends very favorably for Gang Green. Brandon Jacobs, on his first carry since returning from his Game 1 ankle injury, tries to convert the third-and-1 around his left end. Jonathan Vilma meets Jacobs after he passes the stick, and so does S Kerry Rhodes. Rhodes rips the ball out of Jacobs grasp, then picks it up and goes the short 11 yards for the surprising touchdown.

It's the Jets' first fumble-return TD since Victor Hobson took Rhodes' strip sack of J.P. Losman 32 yards up at Buffalo last season. And it's the Jets' first FR-TD in the Meadowlands since James Reed went 33 yards with a John Abraham strip sack of Byron Leftwich in Game 3 of the 2005 season vs. Jacksonville (coincidentally the game in which Pennington tore his rotator cuff for the second time).

Jets 7, Giants 0

Another three-and-out for the Jets D, then the Green & White move crisply from their 39 to the Giants 24. It is true that the Jets are tied for the best red-zone TD percentage in the AFC (not the whole league, as Dick Enberg just said on CBS), but they never get there. Then Mike Nugent lines up for a 42-yarder from the left hash toward the East goalposts — and misses wide left. That's two straight misses under 50 yards after he hit the previous 24 in a row.

Rookie David Harris moves quickly to take down Ward on a short toss from Manning for a 4-yard loss. So the Giants end the first quarter facing a third-down conversion and having not chalked up their first first down of the game yet.