07/02 — If this is July, it must be time to take a quick look back and ahead at the Jets and their AFC East brethren in the weeks before the opening of NFL training camps.

This is a little project I undertook last year that helped us wile away the last idle hours of summer with quirky examinations of each division team — one Radar entry on a good trend of a given team from last season and another entry on a not-so-good trend that the team in question will want to correct in the coming season.

Today I'll kick off my precamp crafts project with a look a tendency the Miami Dolphins will want to turn around.

Of course, when a team goes 1-15, there are many such tendencies. But one that rushed to the forefront for the Dolphins in 2007 was their running game. It ran on empty in finishing 32nd and last in the NFL, allowing 153.5 yards per game.

How un-Fin-like is that? Very. Since the 1970 merger, the Dolphins have flirted with the lowest rung on the rushing defense ladder several times, but the last time they finished last was back in their first two seasons of existence, when they came in ninth in 1967 and 10th in '68 in the AFL.

In fact, Miami hadn't been last vs. the run at any time during a season since at least 1995, until last season when the Fish checked in at 32nd seven times, including the final five weeks of the season.

Here are the lowest-ranking Dolphins run defenses in the 38 seasons since the merger:

There are several reasons this trend is unlikely to continue. For one, new head coach Tony Sparano brought in Paul Pasqualoni from Dallas to be his defensive coordinator. With Pasqualoni contributing as linebackers coach to the Cowboys' defense from 2005-07, the 'Pokes run defense improved from 15th to 10th to sixth.

Sparano has also established an intensive new strength program that should benefit a Dolphins D that had many injuries last season and whose top two players, setting aside the Jason Taylor situation, are DE Vonnie Holliday, 34, and LB Joey Porter, 31.

"I haven't done some of this stuff since college," said Holliday. "We're in the sand pit every day, working on our small muscles, and then in the weightroom lifting free weights, doing squats, dead lifts. It's been brutal. But I feel great. My knees used to bother me. They feel strong right now."

Then there's the Bill Parcells influence. The Tuna, the Dolphins' new executive vice president of football operations, brings many good traits to the teams he's involved with, and one of them is run D — he's had 11 top-10 run defenses in the 20 NFL seasons he's been a head coach or higher (although none with the Jets from 1997-2000).

One more thing: Nose tackle Jason Ferguson is back. No, not as a Jet but as a twice-a-year opponent of the team that drafted him in 1997. After 11 pro seasons, what does the irrepressible Ferg have left in the tank? Thomas Jones, Leon Washington, Alan Faneca, Nick and Brick and the rest of the Jets' ramped-up rushing offense should find out when they run into him on opening day at Dolphin Stadium.

These features will run twice a week up through the week that the Jets' full squad begins practicing July 24. This is the schedule:

Week of July 1 — Miami Down, New England Up

Week of July 7 — Buffalo Up, Jets Down

Week of July 14 — Miami Up, Buffalo Down

Week of July 21 — New England Down, Jets Up