01/31 — Jabar Gaffney and his father, Derrick Gaffney, have a unique relationship. It's one that doesn't require Dad, the former Jets wide receiver, to be on site to watch his son, the current New England WR, play in Super Bowl XLII on Sunday.

"All the family wanted to come to the game, so he thought he would give up his ticket," Jabar said from the Patriots' Kierland, Ariz., hotel this week. "He set an example by saying, 'I'll stay back.' "

"I'm going to be right here in Jacksonville," Derrick told me Wednesday night. "I've got a whole bunch of family who want to go and can go. Yeah, it was a real tough decision, but I've got people from the left and right, east and west, north and south trying to get tickets. And at this time of year, you don't want to put pressure on Jabar. He's got pressure enough on himself."

To be sure, the younger Gaffney, along with his Patriots teammates, are only trying to win one more game for the immortality of going 19-0 by winning the franchise's fourth Super Bowl in seven years. But the elder Gaffney is staying in touch — he's been calling his son once, sometimes twice a day all week as the Pats and Giants prepare for Sunday's showdown.

"Yeah, I have to update him every day," Jabar said. "That's kind of the tradeoff."

Derrick had plenty to do with getting Jabar prepared for the game of his life. In several stories, the son has said, "He taught me everything I know about football." I was curious to know exactly what that meant.

Derrick Gaffney said, yes, it's true.

"When I was done with the Jets, I came back to Jacksonville and applied for coaching jobs in high school but could not get one," he said. "The Lord was saying, 'You're going to train your son.' It was tough but it was worth it."

The training wasn't only in the video area, although Jabar said there was plenty of watching video of Derrick playing for the Jets from 1978-1984. It wasn't just in being on the Jets scene, although Jabar and Marion Barber III, the Dallas Cowboys back, certainly soaked up a lot of experience watching how their dads and the rest of the Jets went about their business in the locker room and on the field.

It was Derrick literally coaching Jabar, in receiving skills, route-running, weight-training. All the things the father learned in his seven full NFL seasons, he passed on to his son.

A Lights-Out Receiver

"I trained him all the way through, even at [the University of] Florida," Derrick said. "He had a great coach in high school but I was the one who trained him in the off-season. Even now we still compare notes. I told Steve Spurrier when Jabar went to Florida, 'He's going to make your job easier. You're not going to find a high school kid as good as Jabar.'

"He'd go into a room every night before bed and with the lights out, he'd catch 50 passes with his left hand, 50 with his right hand, 50 with both hands. And every night, to get his hands used to the football, he washed the dishes to get his hands soft. Jabar got so good, he could do a Dove commercial."

Derrick ran coaching clinics, not just for his son but for other kids in high school and college who aspired to be pros. He said one of the students was fellow Jacksonvillean Laveranues Coles; another was Jabar's cousin, Lito Sheppard, the Philadelphia Eagles' veteran corner.

Jabar certainly took to all the coaching. He starred at UF and was selected by the expansion Houston Texans with the first pick of the second round in the 2002 NFL Draft. The Texans released him after four seasons, then the Eagles took a look and also cut him before he latched on last midseason with the Patriots.

He had tame numbers until the playoffs, when he caught eight passes for 104 yards in the Gillette Stadium playoff win over the Jets and 10-for-103 the next week at San Diego.

Many of his career stats have outdone the old man: 243 regular- and postseason catches to Derrick's 165, 16 touchdowns to eight. But Derrick still has the young whippersnapper beat in downfield dimension — his career average of 16.6 yards per catch have Jabar's 11.9 beat by almost 5 yards a catch.

"And he made it to the AFC Championship Game once," Jabar said. "That's all he ever talks about."

Dad's Big Game

"That was 'the Mud Bowl' down in Miami," Derrick recalled of the title game after the 1982 strike season 25 years and eight days ago. "During the week we practiced on only about 20 yards of field — there was snow, cold and ice in New York and it was so cold that the cover on our field got stuck down into the grass.

"We had a decent week of practice and went down to Miami after it rained all week. Then we found out, so we were told, that [Miami coach] Don Shula had watered the field down."

The Jets, you'll recall from your history books, lost, 14-0, and the Dolphins went on to Super Bowl XVI instead.

One other trait Derrick passed on to Jabar was patience. Shortly after the younger Gaffney had become Tom Brady's go-to guy in the 2006 playoffs, the Patriots added Randy Moss, Wes Welker and Donté Stallworth in the off-season.

Gaffney didn't pout, carved out a niche in the offense, and still wound up with 36 catches for 449 yards and five TDs, including one of the most important grabs of the Patriots' undefeated season, the 8-yard score from Brady with 44 seconds left that rescued the 27-24 win at Baltimore in Week 13.

"It's kind of just waiting around for your shot," Jabar said with his ever-present smile, another gift from his dad. "I'm satisfied with whatever my role is."

"I told Jabar the cream always rises to the top," Derrick said. "What he does is takes advantage of his opportunities. I tell people today they still haven't seen the best of Jabar."

Something else Derrick told Jabar last year was that he knew exactly how his son felt when the Patriots lost their heartbreaker at Indianapolis in last year's AFC title game, because the same thing happened him a quarter of a century earlier.

"Unfortunately, I never got a chance to go to another one," Derrick Gaffney said. "I told him, 'You guys got another chance. Don't be a wallflower. Go to the dance and participate in the dance. It's the biggest dance of all your life.' "

Here are the career NFL regular-season and playoff receiving stats of Derrick and Jabar Gaffney: