DAVIE, Fla. — “You grow up! You grow up!”

The cameras hadn’t yet come to Vontae Davis, but he saw a single reporter stepping in his direction, over the bags, pads and other stuff strewn across the floor like trampled Jets linebackers. The rookie cornerback started speaking in response to an imaginary question, his voice rising the way his youngest teammates had risen to meet a challenge.
“With me and Sean (Smith) being young, we’re gonna make our mistakes,” Davis said, looking at his fellow rookie cornerback, dressing a few stalls down. “But at the same time, we have to learn from our mistakes, go back and watch film, and correct them. That’s the nature of the game. That’s how you get better.”
That’s how you grow up.
“You gotta grow up,” Davis said. “Twenty-one years old, games like that, you don’t have no choice but to grow up. It’s only right.”
That seems like the right way to look at this suddenly compelling 2009 season, which takes a pause before the strong New Orleans Saints visit Oct. 25.
That’s what this season was about, remember?
Growth.
That’s what the realists realized, well before training camp: that hosting the Super Bowl, while a noble goal, was from a script too fanciful for even Pixar to produce. They realized that this was still a rebuilding process, and the primary goal was progress. For Tony Sparano’s program. For players like Smith and Davis and Jake Long and Donald Thomas and Phillip Merling and Kendall Langford and, if he played, Chad Henne most of all.
The eternal optimists will use Monday’s 31-27 victory to bolster their case that the playoffs are plausible, and to contradict the one I made two weeks ago. Certainly, the numbers are creeping onto the optimists’ side, with the Dolphins trailing by only one game in an AFC East lacking a dominant team, holding a 2-0 record against division opponents, and staring at a remaining schedule less daunting than it once seemed.
Five opponents (Carolina, Buffalo, Jacksonville, Tennessee, Tampa Bay) combine to carry a 4-20 record.
So go ahead, there’s no harm in hoping. But Monday’s resilient performance was encouraging for reasons that, in the long term, will matter far more than 2009 playoff positioning. Look at all the recent draft choices who gained experience in a tense pro rivalry game, with some (like Henne) making major contributions and others (like those on both lines) making more subtle ones. Smith broke up a deep pass for Braylon Edwards. Pat White, dusty but determined, picked up a first down.
In the final 11 minutes, Henne made three throws that only the great NFL quarterbacks master. First, the deep ball to Ted Ginn Jr. for a touchdown. Then, to convert a couple of third downs, a touch floater and a dart on the move to Greg Camarillo. The floater came on a play in which, according to coach Tony Sparano, “you can’t bring any more people” than the Jets did. The young quarterback, with the help of his relatively young line, handled Rex Ryan’s pressure packages better than Tom Brady did last month.
“You throw your young guys right in the fire,” veteran nose tackle Jason Ferguson said. “Hey, how else can they walk if you don’t put them on their two feet? Because coming in as a young guy, you’re so happy just to make it. Sometimes guys don’t realize how the team is depending on them. It’s not like, ’We’re in!’ No, now you’ve got to produce. And everyone else has got to believe in them.”
That goes both ways. Young players need to believe in what they’re learning.
“When you come through the course that they have come through right now, some days you don’t know if it is up or if it is down, your head is spinning, the coach is barking on your back, you don’t think you did anything wrong and you think you’re doing it right, and we are telling you to do it the right way (and) it has to be done this way,” Sparano said.
There’s reinforcement in results. That’s why winning always matters more than a draft slot.
“(Winning) lends validation to some of the things you have been preaching or some of the things that some of the veteran players have been preaching,” Sparano said. “They are starting to get it.”
Starting to grow up? As Vontae Davis says, it’s only right that they do. And it’s only right that their growth is the way we score this season.