In the glow of the Jets' 14-12 victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Vinny Testaverde was asked, "Does this ever get old?"
"Just me," he said, smiling.
He will be 42 on Nov. 13, but on Sunday it was as if it were the 1998 season, when he turned 35 and took the Jets 20 minutes away from the Super Bowl before they lost the American Football Conference championship game in Denver. Not that these Jets, with a shaky 2-3 record, are likely to be a Super Bowl contender. But with their defense holding the Bucs to four field goals, Testaverde's ageless arm positioned them for 2-yard and 1-yard touchdown runs by Curtis Martin.
"It's a gift," Testaverde said of his right arm, "and I owe it to myself and to the good Lord who has blessed me with this gift to go out and play well."
For sheer arm strength at such an advanced age, Testaverde is the Roger Clemens of pro football.
As coach Herman Edwards likes to say, "Vinny can still spin it," meaning he can wing a football with a tight spiral.
Most older quarterbacks, like most pitchers, lose their velocity. But unless Testaverde's arm is injured, he should maintain that velocity through the season.
Testaverde's numbers were not dazzling. Overall, he completed 13 of 19 passes for 163 yards; he threw one interception was sacked twice. That won't win many games. But when the Jets needed to convert a third-and-4 at their 31-yard line with 2 minutes 31 seconds left, he whipped a 17-yard pass to Laveranues Coles for a first down at the Jets' 48.
"He threw that pass between two guys, and he threw it high," Mike Heimerdinger, the Jets' offensive coordinator, said.
"The only place Laveranues can go is up and make the play."
Two weeks ago, with Chad Pennington and Jay Fiedler suddenly out with shoulder injuries, Testaverde -- who lives in Oyster Bay, about 15 minutes from the Jets' training complex in Hempstead, NewYork -- was about to take his kids to school when the phone rang.
The Jets needed him. And on Sunday, a week after a 13-3 loss in Baltimore with Brooks Bollinger at quarterback, they needed him even more.
With a new quarterback learning a new system after only two weeks, most offensive coordinators would try to simplify the game plan, but Heimerdinger didn't.
"I kept 90 percent of what we put in last Monday," he said. "I took out four plays he didn't like, but he had 40 base drop-back passes, 12 nickel passes, about 70 passes in all.
"He's comfortable with almost everything because there's nothing he hasn't seen. And with a guy that's seen everything, he's not going to get fooled too much."
Now in his 19th season, Testaverde saw everything with the Bucs (who chose him No. 1 overall in the 1987 draft), the Browns, the Ravens, the Jets and the Cowboys before becoming a free agent after last season. He was a free agent at 41 that no NFL team wanted until the Jets called.
"Lots of times with a new quarterback, he's got to look at pictures," Heimerdinger said, referring to game films.
"But Vinny's got 20 years of pictures. I was the one who had to look at pictures."
For all the "pictures" in his mind after all these years, Testaverde knew that when he trotted onto the field against the undefeated Bucs, he had to adjust to what coaches and players in every sport call the speed of the game -- how much faster everything happens than it does in practice.
"During my quiet time at home, I would think about that a lot," he said.
"Sitting there at night, laying awake in bed, thinking about the speed of the game and visualizing it in my mind, trying to slow it down, so that when I took my first snap it wouldn't be 90mph. I think that helped me."
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