Last January they both went to Denver to see the season die but walked out of Mile High Stadium with very different ideas on where they were going. Johnson saw Parcells leaving him in the distance, having delivered a division title and coming close to delivering Denver's John Elway to a clumsy retirement in the AFC Championship game.

	It's been a long year already for Bill Parcells and the Jets.

Parcells walked around the losing locker room, telling his players, "There's no insurance you can take out" for a return to the conference championship game. It didn't matter. The Jets were close. Everybody could see it, which was why Parcells had gone back to work, fast, understanding it was time to push hard for the 1999 season.

A week before that Jets game, the Broncos destroyed the Dolphins in the AFC playoffs, sending Johnson into seclusion, sick over the devastating defeat and a growing guilt over years of disregard for family and loved-ones. As Parcells tried to move the final pieces into place, Johnson delivered his resignation to Dolphins owner Wayne Huzienga, only to be talked out of it.

Nine months later, these two worlds have turned upside down. The Dolphins are 2-0, thriving on a rookie runner with a rap sheet, Cecil Collins. They're watching the corridors of power in the conference crumble around them.

The Jets are 0-2 and without Pro Bowl quarterback Vinny Testaverde for the rest of the season. They're wondering whether the misfortune of the Jets of old ever will end, or worse, whether Parcells will be the genius to offer his resignation when the season is over.

"I have a lot on my mind, as far as how to try to rectify what's going on here," Parcells said. "We have some tough teams coming up, and if we don't play any better than we did (Sunday) night, we aren't going to win any of these games. That's the truth. If we don't play a lot better, we won't win any of these."

Ever since he he came to the Jets, turning a 1-15 team into a contender, the speed of so much, so fast intoxicated Parcells, reaffirming to him that, indeed, Pat Riley was right. There was winning, and there was misery, and no more could Parcells stand to dance on that dark side. He's had three trips to the Super Bowl, two heart procedures, and he has no tolerance for the grind of struggling anymore.

Now, though, this season is going to be a grind. Somehow, Parcells the GM stuck Parcells the coach with Rick Mirer as a quarterback. Even he can't make a contender out of this mess. Parcells confided that a 12-4 season a year ago exhausted him like none before it, so here's the fear Jets fans must face today: What's 6-10 going to do to him?

"I keep saying I'm too old to lose," Parcells said. "Not many people understand what that means. I have a few players who understand it, and I understand it. If it gets to where you're just losing all the time, at my age, it's just not worth it. It takes too much out of me. Winning makes it worthwhile."

Back in training camp, before Testaverde and several starters -- including Wayne Chrebet and Otis Smith had gone down -- Parcells passed out T-shirts to the Jets with the words "Start Over" emblazoned on the back. Of course, he had hoped it would be a state of mind, not a state of affairs. He's 58 years old and told himself long ago he never planned to reach 60 as a football coach.

"It can't go that much longer," Parcells said in the preseason. "This is a young man's game. When I started, I think I was the second-youngest coach in the league. Now, I think I'm the third-oldest. I know I'm not going to go on forever."

Forever had come for Jimmy Johnson in January, when his world had come crumbling down around him. It started to come apart in December, when he chose a Monday Night Football game over visiting hours at the funeral home for his deceased mother in Texas. When he finally made it there for the burial services, his grown sons had to hold him up on the steps of the church.

For the first time, the price for the years and years coaching football had come calling for him, smothering him in a shroud of guilt. All these years, he wondered, what had I done? What had I sacrificed? Soon, the Dolphins' season had come to a humiliating end with the 37-3 loss to the Broncos, and the man driven his whole coaching life for championships, motivated for that and nothing else, found a complete emptiness inside of him.

He wanted to walk out on the Dolphins, on the twilight of Dan Marino's Super Bowl dream. Huzienga talked him out of it, agreeing to hire Johnson's longtime assistant, Dave Wannstedt, as an associate coach to ease the burden on his maniacal friend. Johnson married his longtime girlfriend, Rhonda, and set out on the season promising to discover a little balance in his life for the first time.

Already, after a close victory over Arizona on Sunday, Johnson could be found laughing in his post-game news conference, introducing a Make-A-Wish Foundation auction winner to share the interview podium with him. This was JJ? This was JJ. Nine months had changed everything.

Somewhere, Bill Parcells was glowering over a lost season, his chance for a championship gone, his season reduced to biding time. All along, Bill Parcells promised he was too old for that.

Adrian Wojnarowski, a columnist for the Bergen (N.J.) Record, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. He can be reached at NJCOL1@aol.com.