The point of the exercise was to demonstrate how over time the whole can be so much more powerful than the sum of its individual parts.

Afterwards, he commissioned squad t-shirts, reading "Avalanche" on the front, and "Joining Together to Create an Unstoppable Force" on the back. For a rookie manager about to embark on his first season in charge of an outfit that had won four games from 16 the previous year, the quest for forging unity had begun.

By early November, the Jets had won a respectable four games out of eight but were heading to Gillette Stadium to take on their arch rivals, the New England Patriots. Facing down a superior team to whom they'd lost seven consecutive games, Mangini (right) sought some outside help. A huge boxing aficionado, he invited Teddy Atlas, legendary trainer and America's pre-eminent television analyst of the sport, to speak to the players about the challenge of slaying Goliath.

"The imagination of what you're going to deal with is much greater than the act will ever be, " said Atlas.

"When Mike Tyson was fighting, his greatest strength was other people's weaknesses. I told the players, before Buster Douglas you realised Tyson's opponents were defeated not because they couldn't fight but because they didn't. I said, why don't you just go out against New England and play them."

With Atlas's speech fresh in their minds, Mangini re-ran Cassius Clay's first victory over Sonny Liston the night before his team shocked the Patriots 1714 on their own turf. The two sides meet at the same venue this afternoon in the first round of the play-offs, a place nobody in the sport expected the Jets to reach this season. That they did so is largely down to Mangini's unorthodox approach to, and instant success at, wringing extraordinary performances out of an ordinary bunch of players.

Not even 12 months after the 35-yearold left a job as an assistant with the Patriots to become the second-youngest boss in NFL history, the admittedly excitable New York media have christened him "mangenius". A workaholic who reads his children their bedtime story by video phone every night, he's even made it onto an episode of Sesame Street.

The bright lights of the big city are an unlikely boon for somebody who began his coaching career way, way off-Broadway. While studying political science at Wesleyan College in Connecticut, he spent a couple of semesters in Australia where he ended up taking charge of the Kew Colts, a semi-pro grid-iron outfit in Melbourne. Upon graduation, he began . . . as most NFL coaches do . . . at the very bottom of the food chain. His first job title with the Cleveland Browns was ballboy. His task was to help out with equipment during practice, to photocopy game plans most of the rest of the day, and to be at the beck and call of his superiors.

"We call them PHDs, " said Mangini about that role. "Poor, Hungry and Driven. Any PHD, I definitely love to give opportunities to."

His own stint as a PHD was sponsored by then Browns' head coach Bill Belichick.

Having spotted the enthusiastic ballboy during that 1994 season, Belichick employed him in some capacity for 10 of the next 11 years, a period during which they shared three Super Bowl triumphs. Their parting last January was made all the more bitter by their history. After five years with the Patriots, one as defensive co-ordinator, Mangini left to take over the Jets.

His boss didn't approve and so began one of the great feuds of modern American sport. Following the November clash, Belichick barely shook hands with his former protege and until this past week, he refused to mention him by name when talking to the press.

"The way I feel about Bill is the way I've felt about Bill since I first got to know him and it's not going to change, " said Mangini who has handled the contretemps with far more grace.

"Really, it's the same as what we talked about in the first two games. My feelings have not changed one iota.

We're still going to be competing on Sunday and they are still going to be trying to beat us and we are still going to be trying to beat them and somebody is going home. So what I want to do is get our team as ready to go as we possibly can."

Back on the first Sunday in August, Mangini took his squad to Giants' Stadium to participate in a simulated game.

Designed to run through what the full match-day experience would be like, he created two teams and then ensured every detail was as it would be during an NFL fixture. A coin was tossed, the national anthem was played, and professional officials refereed the action.

With every one of the 80,000 seats empty, the video screens ran replays and commercials, a producer called the television time-outs, and the PA blasted music to mimic the usual crowd noise.

At the time, that sort of holistic approach to preparation provoked a lukewarm reaction among fans and media. No matter what happens today, everybody now thinks there was a method to the madness.