Maybe it is the Brooks Bollinger era. Yesterday the Jets, from scrimmage to scrimmage, whipped the Miami Dolphins convincingly – far more convincingly, in fact, than they did in beating them 17-7 back on September 18.

Rookie Cedric Houston slashed through the Miami line for 84 yards on 15 carries, an effort more impressive than any Curtis Martin was able to run up this year before his injury. The only reason Houston and the Jets didn’t get more yards rushing is because they were spending so much time ripping Miami apart through the air.

Bollinger enjoyed, for him anyway, the equivalent of two games’ worth of productivity – 28 of 42 for 327 yards and two touchdowns, and, remarkably, no interceptions. The Jets had 24 first downs to Miami’s 14, held the ball for nearly eight more minutes, had 53 fewer yards in penalties, and passed for 152 more yards – and found a way to lose.

It was a fluke. I’ve been kind of hard on the Jets the last few weeks, so you can trust me when I say they should have won this one. The Jets lost three fumbles to Miami’s none, and though fumbles and interceptions are always lumped together under the heading of turnovers, fumbles are always a fluke. The flukiness on this afternoon was compounded by the fact that the Jets found three different ways to lose fumbles – on a center snap to the punter, on a run by Houston, and after a catch by tight end Doug Jolley, who otherwise had his best day of the season with nine catches for 102 yards and a touchdown.

Another killer fluke wasn’t even a fumble, but a bad call on linebacker Jonathan Vilma, who also had a fine day with four tackles, but who was flagged for roughing the passer in the second quarter on an totally legitimate. The penalty allowed Miami to grind 52 yards for a field goal and a 10-point lead. After that, it looked like it was going to be a typical late-season Jets collapse.

But the Jets found reserves of heart they probably didn’t know they had, rebounding for 17 unanswered points in the second and third quarters. The second touchdown came when someone in the Jets’ brain trust reminded Herm Edwards that it is legal to throw long to the tight end, which Bollinger did for the first time this season.

The result was a 60-yard, one-play, nine second drive that produced a string of superlatives for the Jets statisticians: Bollinger’s longest completion, Jolley’s first touchdown of the season, and, most impressively, the Jets’ longest gain of the season. It was the kind of play that looked like something you could build on for next season, and in retrospect it may well prove to be.

For all of that, the euphoria didn’t last long. The Jets knocked Dolphins quarterback Gus Frerotte out only to bring on backup Sage Rosenfels, who set an NFL record for the quarterback with the weirdest name ever to come off the bench and win a game. Rosenfels took the Dolphins 61 yards to tie the game (the capper was a Ricky Williams 23-yard run) then, on his next possession, connected with Marty Booker for 50 yards on Miami’s only long completion and the Jets’ only blown coverage of the day.

In a fairer world, the game would have been over right there, but the Jets’ agony was extended by their having one last shot deep in Miami territory. Bollinger, who was 28-of-38 up to that point, threw four straight incompletions.

All losses hurt, but losses like this one really stink. On the other hand, the Jets realistically didn’t expect to win at all, and secretly must have felt pretty good about their performance, particularly Bollinger’s newly discovered ability to whip the ball downfield on rollouts and bootlegs. It was a terrific performance, and if he can approximate it in the next two games, the Jets can at least go through the winter with an unexpected bit of optimism.

***

Tiki Barber’s 41-yard touchdown run against the Kansas City Chiefs on Saturday was the greatest I’ve ever seen. This wasn’t one of these Reggie Bush type Heisman highlight runs where the runner takes a pitchout, swerves through an eight-foot hole, and outruns a turned-around secondary into the end zone. This was a run on which 10 tacklers touched him and the 11th had a good shot.

The stats sheet says Barber ran for 220 yards; that is wrong. He netted 220 yards from scrimmage. What he really ran for was more like 270 yards, most of them right and left and then, on a couple of occasions, backward before he could adjust and accelerate forward. What Tiki Barber looked like Saturday was a faster Walter Peyton.

Once again, a terrific individual effort made the Giants look better than they are by covering up some otherwise distressing weaknesses. The most obvious, of course, is the baffling ineffectiveness of Eli Manning, who seems to have lost all the confidence he was showing while leading the Giants to come-from-behind victories earlier in the season.

Just a couple of short weeks ago, the Giants had the most explosive and balanced offense in the NFC and were threatening to average 30 points a game. Now they need the greatest rushing performance of the season just to crack 20. Plaxico Burress, who, a short time ago, was on the verge of being crowned the most dangerous receiver in the league, has now been reduced to the role of decoy for Jeremy Shockey and Amani Toomer. Toomer’s 31-yard touchdown catch early in the fourth quarter was actually a 10-yard catch and a 21-yard run through two defensive backs, and was only slightly less impressive than Barber’s run.

The biggest thing Barber’s performance did was to blot out a terrible effort by the Giants rushing defense, which allowed Chiefs’ second-stringer Larry Johnson to gain 167 yards of his own. All in all, the Giants defense allowed 5.5 yards per rush, more than adequate to loose a football game on any normal day.

Despite their gaudy 10-4 record, the Giants are still very much a team in search of a leader and an identity. Tiki Barber made a strong bid for both roles on Saturday, but Barber, or somebody, had better close the deal by next week against Washington in what now looms as the defining game of their season.

Mr. Barra is the author, most recently, of “The Last Coach: A Life of Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant.”