Eric Mangini is more confident than his wallflower voice in news conferences might suggest. In the wake of a 4-12 season, he had enough faith in his game-planning ability to buy himself a $4 million Morris County, N.J., home.

The last Jets' coach who went 4-12, Herman Edwards, was shipped off to Kansas City for a fourth-round pick that would be used to take Leon Washington. Mangini doesn't believe his employer would trade him. He wouldn't have bought a six-bedroom Colonial near the team's new facility if he did.

But to date, Mangini has proved only that he's an 18-21 NFL head coach, and a guy who appears to have benefited a lot more from his former boss, Bill Belichick, than Belichick ever benefited from him. So on Sunday in Orchard Park, N.Y., Mangini will begin the biggest month of his professional life.

His five games in November include road dates with the Bills, the Patriots and the league's last unbeaten team, the Titans. The Jets will host the improved Rams and the division-leading Broncos.

Mangini needs to go 4-1 this month, 3-2 at the worst. Anything short of that, and the Jets will be all but out of the playoff race in a Brett Favre season that likely will go down as one-and-done.

You can't see Favre coming back if this is all there is, can you? You don't imagine him signing up for another 16 games of cruel and unusual punishment if he thinks his coach's playbook reads like the Greek alphabet, do you?

Mangini has to repair the disconnect between his philosophy and Favre's assuming Favre has one — and it will take more than a cute line about blackjack to get it done.

"Don't hit on 20, you know what I mean?" Mangini said last week. "Sometimes it's OK to stay and see what the dealer has."

In response, Favre joked that he's not much of a gambler, that he scares other blackjack players away from the table because they realize "that guy takes hits on everything." The old quarterback has a refreshing sense of humor. Even when he was fed to the Lions over the inside Packers information he gave Detroit, Favre was able to weather the storm with relative ease.

But during the first real grilling on his quarterback sneak, at a news conference held 11 days back, Favre's most telling confession was lost in all the noise surrounding his Green Bay betrayal.

"Learning this Jets' game plan has been difficult," he said that morning.

More difficult than he fathomed when Mangini promised to name his son-to-be after Favre if the quarterback accepted a trade to the Jets.

Zack Brett Mangini was born on Favre's birthday, Oct. 10. At the time, Favre was coming off his best performance as a Jet, a six-touchdown blitzing of the Cardinals that had everyone believing he was finally at peace with Mangini's Xs and Os.

Only Favre has been an unruly interception machine ever since. He nearly handed Edwards' lousy Chiefs an upset victory in Giants Stadium, adding three degrees of urgency to his most recent weekly meeting with his coach.

"You're not trying to reel him in and trying to coach him out of being a good player," Mangini said. "You're just trying to reinforce that everything needs to be a calculated risk."

At 39, Favre isn't the all-time league leader with 457 touchdown passes and 299 interceptions for nothing. His idea of a calculated risk would be heaving one up for grabs with his left arm rather than his right.

"I don't think that he's become anybody besides who he's been," Mangini said.

In other words, Favre's been exactly what Mangini thought he was getting an untamed colt bent on taking the Jets for their wildest ride.

It's the coach's job to identify Favre's strength and play to it, as the quarterback is the yield of the biggest trade in franchise history. Time is already running low. Favre might not return next year, and the Jets didn't spend more than $140 million in free agent money in the off-season to go 8-8.

With Tom Brady gone, the division is wide open. With Peyton Manning down, the conference is wide open, too.

A victory over the Bills, Favre said, "would do a lot for our psyche, character and things like that, but I don't know about put us over the hump."

This could be the Jets' biggest game in Orchard Park since Bill Parcells clinched the franchise's first AFC East title there in 1998, the year his team also won at New England and at Miami and ended up one half away from the Super Bowl in Denver.

"All the factors that go into winning and losing," Favre said, "are magnified that much more when you play away."

Mangini is 2-9 in road games since the start of last year.

If he doesn't start reversing the trend Sunday, his career might take a turn he never believed it would take.

Favre remains heavily favored to be the first Jet out the door.

But over these five games in November, Mangini will determine if he'll be among the guys right behind him.