Posted by ESPN.com's Tim Graham
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| | AP Photo/Alan Diaz |
| | Chad Pennington will face his former team on Sunday. |
DAVIE, Fla. -- Miami Dolphins QB Chad Pennington is trying his Bill Belichick best to take the emotion out of Sunday's game against the New York Jets.
"I would be remiss to say that there are no emotions at all," Pennington said Wednesday afternoon. "None of us are emotionless beings. But my whole focus has been on what we need to do to win."
Still, a victory on Sunday certainly would award Pennington some retribution -- whether he wants to admit it or not.
He spent eight seasons, most of them good, with the Jets. He's the NFL's career leader in completion percentage among passers with 1,500 attempts. He was comeback player of the year in 2006.
But he lost his job to Kellen Clemens last season, and although Pennington seemed to outplay him early in what was supposed to be an open competition in training camp, there was a strong sense the Jets wanted Clemens to take over in 2008.
Then the Jets cut Pennington to make room for Brett Favre, who will be making his Jets debut Sunday.
Wouldn't Pennington love to stick it to the Jets' front office and coach Eric Mangini?
"For me, I'm just not going there," Pennington said, "because I think it's disrespectful and I'd be doing a disservice to my teammates if I made this game about me and wanting to beat the Jets.
"Absolutely, I want to win our first game, period, regardless of who it is. It's a division game. It's opening day and all of us want to get off to a good start. So I'm not going to put too much into the emotions of it because I just think that wouldn't be the right thing to do."
