11/14 — The emotions in the visitors' locker room flowed like champagne after the Jets' close shave at Gillette.

"It's surreal," said TE Dustin Keller. "I'm on cloud nine."

"This," QB Brett Favre summed up, "is what I came back for."

LB David Bowens agreed with the premise that this was the most exciting game of his career.

"It was full of excitement," he said. "It had a little bit of everything. Special teams, offense, defense — you name it, it had it."

"I've never seen a locker room like this," offered Wallace Wright. "People had tears of joy. It was loud. There was a lot of hugging going on that normally doesn't happen, but we feel like we're a family now."

And that's what families do after two top teams battle for first place in a game filled with, in head coach Eric Mangini's memorable phrase, "ebbing and flowing," and your family comes out with a pulsating 34-31 overtime triumph.

Perfect? No. Perfect would've been the Jets doubling their 24-6 lead just before halftime and served notice on the Tennessee Titans, the AFC, the NFL that they'd been ignored long enough. That didn't happen. In fact, it got too close for comfort as the Patriots accumulated yardage, chipped away at the scoreboard, and caught the Jets with one second left in regulation as Matt Cassel reached his 400-yard passing game with a pinpoint 15-yard touchdown pass to Randy Moss past Ty Law.

But before we dissect all that didn't go well in the second half for the Green & White, let's keep in mind that the Patriots have quite a bit of the personnel and all the system that enabled them to go 18-0 before their Super Bowl XLII loss to the Giants, that the Patriots have had the Jets' number since 2000, and that the Jets are now in sole possession of first place in the AFC East since Week 17 of the 2002 season.

"I really didn't want it to be this way, but we won, so hey!" said LB Eric Barton. "It's up there. A total team effort. We had to fight. We won. I can't say enough about the guys' effort in this locker room. We stuck with it. We knew it wasn't going to be easy. We got it done."

Let's turn a negative into a positive. The 511 yards the Patriots gained? It was the third-most yardage by an opponent in a Jets victory in franchise history. Here are the top three:

But really what the Jets needed out of this game was signs of growth. There was one very big one that occurred in the fourth quarter, when the offense threw off its blankets after generating three scoreless drives (two of them three-and-outs) in the third quarter and staged a drive that it could be argued made this victory possible.

It was the 7:06 drive from the Jets 33 to Thomas Jones' 1-yard touchdown run to give the Jets a 31-24 lead. The growth from Game 2 was apparent: The Jets on first-and-goal from the 3 couldn't run it in on three plays in that 19-10 loss to the Patriots. This time they faced ... first-and-goal at the 3. This time they ran it in.

"Redemption, huh?" said OT Damien Woody. "The situation reared its head again and this time around we made good on it. But that's what good teams do. They get in a situation like that and they have to pound it in. That's what we did."

But the Jets still needed a scoring drive in overtime to salvage the night. And in that regard players labeled Kerry Rhodes' call of "Tails, baby" on the overtime coin flip as the call of the game. It gave the ball back to Brett Favre and the offense. And despite facing third-and-15 at their 15 to get it started, the 7:50 winning drive to Jay Feely's game-winning 34-yard field goal was under way.

"They had all the momentum and every reason to win it," Favre said of the way that regulation ended. "We could've easily folded. I'm sure sure most people were betting against us. We found a way to win the game and I think that says a lot about our team at this point."

But what does it say about the Jets from this point on, beginning with the Titans, who may or may not be undefeated when the Jets pay them a visit in Music City a week from Sunday? That will have to wait for a while, because once the players vacated their Foxboro, Mass., locker room, they weren't expected to come back to work as a full team until next Wednesday.

"Of course we didn't want it to go into overtime," Woody said. "We had it in our hands. It is what it is. We went back on the field and said we're going to take care of business and we won the game ourselves.

"This took everything we had. It was a big victory. We're going to savor it for a few days."

Jets-Patriots: First Half

Jets-Patriots: Second Half

Jets Claim 1st Place: Oust Pats in OT, 34-31