After watching the Redskins manhandle the Cowboys in Dallas, I’m pretty sure I would not want to be the Cincinnati Bengals this coming Sunday, I have a feeling they will end up on the wrong side of a big score. If you have any Dallas players on your fantasy team, this would be a great week to play them.

With Brett Favre throwing six touchdown passes, the Jets won 56-35. But don’t expect them to get above .500 by much. Their defense is porous to say the least and Favre will have more and more ‘‘bad” Brett days as the season goes on (see the San Diego game two weeks ago).

I hate saying this here, but my upset special of the week is Seattle over the Giants. Couple things going against the G-men (aka New Jersey⁄A) are that they play better on the road than at home, and in this decade they are 1-7 in games after bye weeks.

This will be an interesting week to see if a few teams’ performances are for real. A couple that come to mind are New England (if they lose to San Francisco there really IS a problem); Miami (tough test against a resurgent Chargers squad); Washington (with a brutal schedule, they have to take on the Eagles in Philadelphia); and the Ravens⁄Titans, meeting each other in a battle of two of the league’s best defenses. It will also be interesting to see how Denver rebounds from their standard annual loss in Kansas City. Their nonexistent defense might be just what the doctor ordered for Jacksonville’s David Garrard, Maurice Jones-Drew and Fred Taylor.

As I close up this week’s column I have to take a few lines to bid farewell to New York’s Shea Stadium. With the Mets’ annual (will it happen again next year too?) swoon complete, so is the life of Shea, the first place I ever went to see a major league baseball game and the fourth oldest stadium still in use, behind Fenway, Wrigley and Dodger stadiums.

It’s hard to put into words exactly the place Shea holds in my sporting conscious. But there are so many memories of growing up in the late ‘60s and ‘70s and all the summer days spent at Shea and watching the Mets. I first went in 1968 – I was 11, the Mets were six and Shea was still a shiny new 4-year-old.

That is where I fell in love with baseball. The train rides on the Long Island Rail Road when only one (or none) of the four of us would pay the fare; jumping over the turnstiles or running through the gates to get on the subway; getting nosebleed seats and moving down in the 6th or 7th inning to the mezzanine or loge, kick our feet up and watching the ‘‘Amazins.”

Because that was what they became in 1969. That incredible, magical year that culminated in the unlikely upset of the Baltimore Orioles (in five games!) and the Mets’ first World Series championship. The names from that team still come so easily all these years later – Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Gary Gentry, Don Cardwell, Tommy Agee, Cleon Jones, Ron Swoboda, Walt Weiss, Donn Clendenon, Buddy Harrelson, Ed Kranepool, Jerry Grote, Art Shamsky, Wayne Garrett and Ed Charles, not to mention Tug McGraw and Nolan Ryan (yes, THAT Nolan Ryan. At 22 he went 6-3 with 1 save in 10 starts and 25 relief appearances, 92 Ks in 89 innings).

Actually, it was also the first place I ever went to a football game, in 1969 to see the Jets and Joe Namath play the Bills and OJ Simpson. Shea and Yankee stadium, gone in the same year – I sure will miss them.