In every football game, it is said, you’ll see at least one memorable play. The most memorable play in the Jets 17-7 victory over the Miami Dolphins yesterday came with just four seconds to play, when Dolphins quarterback Gus Frerotte spiked the ball. It was an absolutely bizarre moment, for which no one, especially not CBS’s bards of banality, Ian Eagle and Greg Buttle, could offer an explanation.

Why anyone would have wanted to make this game any longer is unfathomable. You generally don’t see a football game this listlessly played until late in the season, so I guess it could be said that both teams were in late-season form.

Miami coach Nick Saban probably made a profound tactical error earlier this week when, in the wake of the Dolphins’ surprising 34-10 victory over the Denver Broncos, he told his players to “Remember who we are.” He should have left well enough alone. Frerotte must have awakened the next morning and suddenly remembered he was Gus Frerotte.

Frerotte is starting his 13th season in the NFL for no apparent reason: He has thrown only 13 touchdown passes in his last five seasons. He threw one against the Jets yesterday only by virtue of a slap-and-tickle tackle attempt by Jets cornerback David Barrett on Dolphins’ tight end Randy McMichael at the Jets’ two-yard line. The play came midway through the fourth quarter on a short pass – Frerotte really didn’t throw any other kind – when Barrett came up from his defensive backfield spot and sort of waved a forearm at McMichael as he headed for the goal line marker.

The play wasn’t particularly important – even though it made the score 10-7 – as the Jets, on this day at least, were clearly the better team. But the inattention to detail pointed to a basic flaw in coach Herman Edwards’s teams that has plagued the Jets and which looks likely to come back to haunt them in close games this year.

No, I take that back. Tackling isn’t a detail, it’s a fundamental, and talented as the Jets are, it’s amazing how often they show up woefully inadequate in fundamentals.

It’s possible that Barrett would not have stopped McMichael in any event, but you’re supposed to know by the time you finish playing high school ball that when you hit a man who’s 35 pounds heavier than yourself, you hit him low, trying to knock his legs out from under him, rather than high.

Luckily for the Jets, they were playing a team even more lacking in fundamentals. It’s early, of course, to judge Saban, but my guess is that he will prove to be a typical hotshot college coach who comes into the NFL and discovers that coaching is more than just recruiting superior talent. Saban will probably be more successful than Steve Spurrier was in Washington because Saban’s expertise is defense, and good defense with bad offense will buy you more time than good offense with bad defense, if only because the defeats are generally by smaller margins.

Yesterday’s game was a case in point. Despite wretched pass blocking and no hope of a running attack – Dolphins running backs ran for just 58 yards all afternoon – a flurry of desperation passes put Miami within three points of a tie at a point in the game which only some gritty Dolphins D and the Jets’ ineptitude had kept close.

The Jets squandered an easy scoring opportunity in the second quarter when Curtis Martin fumbled at the Miami one on a play that should have put the game away. Instead, they had to wait till 8:19 was left in the final quarter to close the deal when Pennington threw a one-yard pass to Jerald Sowell.

The Dolphins were pathetic on offense, gaining just 235 yards and being caught nine times for penalties (7 of them assessed). The Jets were a little better, gaining 271 yards, mostly because Pennington is a much better passer than Frerotte, but also because he had better pass blocking.

But the jury is still out on offensive coordinator Mike Heimerdinger’s new offensive plan, which is generally referred to as a “vertical passing scheme.” The downfield single coverage plays it’s supposed to produce have not materialized in two games (though Pennington is averaging a respectable 7.1 yards per throw).

And the Jets’ running game has yet to show up. So far this season, Martin has carried the ball 51 times for a ridiculously low 129 yards, a rate at which he’ll need four runs to get a first down. Another couple of games like this, and Jets fans will be holding signs that read “Come back, Paul Hackett, all is forgiven.”

If the opening-day debacle against Kansas City was a fluke, it’s difficult to call this a game a return to form, if only because it isn’t at all clear what the Jets’ true form will be. Yesterday they won a game that they very easily could have lost with just one more well- timed flub. Beats the heck out of losing it, though.