One is a game manager, a quarterback who's never had a rocket arm, even before he had two surgeries on his throwing shoulder. Yet he beats teams with his precision and his smarts.

The other is a gunslinger, a quarterback who's always had all the physical tools and as his career went on, combined that with a terrific understanding of opposing defenses.

And even though there's plenty more to both Chad Pennington and Brett Favre, there are reasons why those labels have endured. And that was obvious from listening to both of them speak Wednesday as the hype machine cranked into full overdrive for Sunday's season opener between the Jets and Dolphins in Miami.

Pennington, who was released by the Jets less than 24 hours after they traded for Favre last month, refused to make this game a Revenge Bowl.

The closest Pennington came to acknowledging the strangeness of the situation was when he offered that "I'd be remiss to say there are no emotions at all. None of us are emotionless beings. ... But my whole goal is to stay focused entirely on what I need to do to learn my responsibilities and what I need to do to help us win. It would be a disservice to my teammates and to myself if I put too much into the emotional part of this and not being able to go out there and perform well and not giving us a chance to win."

Favre started off much the same way, saying he had "no thoughts as far as Brett versus Chad. I'm sure he'll say the same thing. It makes for a good story, I guess. The bottom line is, it's football. It's the Jets versus the Dolphins."

But he admitted, "If I was playing against the Packers this week, it would feel a little bit different obviously."

And even Pennington's former teammates admit that he isn't just another opposing quarterback, while also acknowledging they must treat him that way. Linebacker Eric Barton played against Pennington while with the Raiders before joining the Jets in 2004 as a free agent.

"But I really didn't know him then," Barton said of his Oakland days, "and I know him pretty well now. So it's definitely going to be kind of a weird feeling, but I'm sure as soon as the ball is snapped we'll get over it."

"We're friends after the game," linebacker Bryan Thomas said, referring to Pennington. "You've picked up on certain things you've seen him do and he's picked up on certain things that he's seen us do. But you can't go by that because they have a different offensive scheme."

There's always plenty of unpredictability when Favre executes any game plan, but the Jets defense certainly has a good idea of what to expect from Pennington. A lot of accurate passes, albeit usually short to intermediate, and very few mistakes. But he also knows the Jets' defensive tendencies.

But Pennington downplayed that factor too, saying, "If you have a game like this and you have a former player or a former team that you're playing against, it's strictly about execution -- knowing your responsibilities and understanding what you need to do to be successful. You can't get caught up in a guessing game and trying to be right every play."

SERIES HISTORY: 85th meeting. Jets lead series, 45-38-1. The Jets have won three of the last four games in Miami, and swept the Dolphins last season. The division rivals haven't faced each other in a season opener since 1995, when the host Dolphins drubbed the Jets, 52-14, in the first game of Rich Kotite's ill-fated two-year tenure as Jets coach.