10/19 — Bart Oates, the longtime Giants center and now a lawyer and real estate adviser for the Jets, didn't invent the phrase, but he's the first athlete I remember using it, back when I first covered that other team in the mid-Eighties.

"You can't eat the elephant all at once."

Of course, it's just another way to say what Jets head coach Eric Mangini says every time someone asks him about the prognosis for the rest of this season, or as the playoffs became a more realistic goal each week in the second half of last season:

"Our only focus is the next practice, the next day, the next game."

And for these Jets, that's the only way to be. As several said along the same lines after stripping off their soaked gear from the heavy storm that hit them at the end of today's practice, "That's the only way for us to think. We're not 5-1. We're 1-5. We just need a win."

It's no news flash to say that the prospects historically for such teams are not good. Since the 1970 merger, 134 NFL teams have started their seasons with one win and five losses. Those teams' combined final records came out to a winning percentage of .301.

Want to consider only the teams since the advent of 16-game schedules in 1978? Those 102 teams that started 1-5 finished with a combined winning percentage of .311.

A 5-11 season is good for a .313 percentage.

Most 1-5 starters don't rise above that funk, but some do. You may already have heard or remember the 1970 Bengals (coincidentally, their relatives 37 years later take on the Jets at Paul Brown Stadium on Sunday) being the only team since the merger to have started 1-5 and made the playoffs.

In fact, those Bengals of TE Bob Trumpy, QB Virgil Carter, MLB Bill Bergey and CB Lemar Parrish opened 1-6 before winning their final seven games to come in at 8-6. Needless to say, it helped that the very first AFC Central race was not very dynamic. The Bengals at the midway point trailed first-place Cleveland by only three games, and their hot streak carried them into the postseason by a game over the 7-7 Browns.

Such a scenario seems highly unlikely in the Patriots-dominated AFC East this year. But other teams have made comebacks from such starts that were rewarding and inspirational and at least put them back in past playoff conversations. Three teams besides those Bengals achieved winning seasons, and nine others made it back to .500 — including the 1974 and 1999 Jets. Here is a list of those 1-5 starters who finished above break-even:

Can the 2007 Jets move into this elite company, or make even greater history? Well, we can debate that all we want (and many of you are doing just that with your pointed comments and suggestions to the Radar). But for these Jets, they know their football menu for the coming weeks will be filled with heaping helpings of pachyderm plank steak, mastodon tartare and, in honor of this weekend's visit to the Queen City, Cincinnati Five-Ways Woolly Mammoth Chili. Because the only way to eat an elephant is one plate at a time.