Vinny Testaverde looked as comfortable in the pocket for the New York Jets on Sunday as he was watching them from his couch two weeks ago. The Meadowlands crowd welcomed Testaverde back with rousing cheers and a standing ovation, and in the end, he deserved it: The 41-year-old quarterback led the Jets to a 14-12 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Curtis Martin ran for two touchdowns and Testaverde looked sharp despite a nine-month layoff. Vinny Testaverde didn't exactly set the world on fire last Sunday.

What he did, do, however, was light the fuse to success for the New York Jets.

Testaverde shook off a whole preseason worth of rust well enough in just one week to hand the ball off to Curtis Martin at the right times. The result was that Martin ran for a pair of touchdowns in a 14-12 upset over the previously un- beaten Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Testaverde completed 13 of 19 passes for 163 yards and one interception, but he didn't steer the Jets (2-3) into the ground. In fact, he darn near helped resurrect a team off to a 1-3 start with starter Chad Pennington out for the rest of the season following a second operation to his right throwing shoulder.

While everyone in Jetland may have been looking toward next season, Testaverde helped pull out a miracle that got the J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets focused on the here and now.

''I think I can still do it, that's why I keep coming back,'' Testaverde said after his first performance as a Jet in three years. ''If the line allows me to only get hit three times a game, I'm going to play a long time.''

Pennington seconded the comeback of Testaverde.

''This would be icing on the cake for him to come back and lead our team to a championship,'' he said. ''You can't write a better book than that. It's a great story. I'm rooting for him.''

Pennington even made himself available to the media on Monday, where he stated for the first time that the injury responsible for his latest surgery — a surface tear to his rotator cuff — was not as serious as the complete tear he had last season. While that was good news, Pennington admitted he probably won't start throwing a football with any force until March 2006.

''Now that I have the answers, my career hasn't flashed before [my eyes],'' he said Monday. ''It's not a career-ending thing. I'm excited about the rest of my career. I'm excited to have 10 months and a full offseason to get healthy and get back to the player I know I can be.''

Bye weeks have been the ultimate win-lose proposition for the New York Giants during the last 16 years. They are 14-3 in games played before the bye week, including a 44-24 rout of St. Louis on Oct. 2. But in games following the week off, the Giants are 3-13. With its first NFC East game this Sunday at Dallas, New York (3-1) hopes to improve on the negative trend. "I think that it is a different football team this year, and teams are always different," second-year coach Tom Coughlin said Tuesday. Last season, the Giants took a 4-1 record into the bye and then began to unravel, losing nine of their next 11 games. "I only have one experience historically with that happening after the bye week," Coughlin said. "We are hopeful that we are a more mature football team." Veteran wide receiver Amani Toomer said the Giants' unsettled schedule may actually work in the team's favor. They have played games on Sundays that started at 1 p.m., 4:15 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., plus a Monday night home game against New Orleans that was originally scheduled as a Sunday road game. "We've had one 1 p.m. game, and all the games have been at different times, so we really haven't gotten into a schedule yet," he said. "That's why I think the bye is good because maybe we're not as settled in as some other teams might be who have had all 1 p.m. games." The Saints game had a ripple effect, forcing alterations in the Giants' practice schedule leading up to the game and in the following week before a trip to San Diego that produced a 45-23 loss. During the bye week, Coughlin scheduled two days of practice and gave the players Friday through Sunday off. This week, he added an extra day of practice on Tuesday, the players' regular day off. "I don't know how it's been," Coughlin said, referring to the Giants' previous post-bye blues. "I can read, so I know what the numbers are. But we are trying to do the very best we can with it from the standpoint of planning how to practice, what to do during the bye week, what to do as you come back, and we are following a formula that has been pretty good for our team and has been pretty good for me over the years." If there is any residual rust on the Giants, the Cowboys' performance in last week's 33-10 rout of Philadelphia should serve to shake it off. Sunday's game is also the Giants' first divisional game of the season. Toomer confirmed that the players approach those games with a little more spring in their step. "Every time you go home and watch TV, you see how the Eagles did, you see how the Cowboys did, you see how the Redskins did," Toomer said. "Other teams in the NFC, maybe. But mostly those division games are it. Your goal every year is to win the division so you get the automatic playoff berth. You don't want to get that wild-card berth and have to play on the road."