EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Andy Dalton got hit hard by the New York Jets, early and often. In the end, the quarterback and the rest of the Cincinnati Bengals were the ones standing.Mike Nugent kicked a 47-yard field goal with 54 seconds left, lifting the Bengals to a back-and-forth 23-22 season-opening victory Sunday.Dalton threw for 366 yards and a touchdown, but was sacked a career-high seven times by the Jets, including 2 1/2 by Leonard Williams and two by Steve McLendon.Any time you can get a win on the road, youve got to take these games, Dalton said. This one was big.A.J. Green caught 12 passes for 180 yards, mostly against Darrelle Revis to help the Bengals beat the Jets for the first time in 10 meetings in New Jersey.The whole week everybody was saying A.J. vs. Darrelle, Green said. Revis is a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Its my honor going against him. I was just trying to make plays anytime the ball came my way.Josh Shaw sealed the victory with an interception of Ryan Fitzpatrick in the closing seconds, helping Cincinnati improve to 7-7 in openers under coach Marvin Lewis.Nick Folk kicked a go-ahead 23-yard field goal with 3:23 remaining, but Dalton marched the Bengals (1-0) downfield for the winning drive. The first missed extra point in Folks career and a blocked 22-yard attempt came back to haunt the Jets (0-1).Dalton finished 23 of 30 with the TD and an interception, and Jeremy Hill ran for 31 yards and a touchdown. The Bengals took the lead in the third quarter when Hill bulldozed his way up the middle for a 12-yard TD run. The drive was aided by Brandon LaFells 49-yard catch over Marcus Williams on third-and-18.The Jets drove to the Bengals 1 on their next possession, but stalled, leaving it to Folk to kick a 20-yard field goal to make it 20-19. After Nugent, a former Jet, was wide right on a 52-yard attempt, the Jets drove down the field and went ahead on Folks go-ahead 23-yarder.Fitzpatrick finished 19 of 35 for 189 yards and touchdown passes to Quincy Enunwa and Eric Decker. The Jets were hurt by drives sputtering in the red zone and having to settle for field-goal attempts rather than touchdowns.We had our opportunities, Fitzpatrick said. We were winning in the fourth quarter and we just couldnt shut the door.PREGAME TRIBUTEThe Jets held a pregame tribute for the families and victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.Bengals linebacker Rey Maualuga led the entire team out of tunnel carrying the American flag. Moments later, Jets safety Rontez Miles did the same to huge cheers from the MetLife Stadium crowd.Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was an honorary captain, along with representatives from the FDNY, NYPD and PAPD and the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Tower Foundation. Former wide receivers Wayne Chrebet and Laveranues Coles and linebacker Marvin Jones, members of the Jets 2001 team, were also at midfield for the pregame coin toss.Every member of both teams stood on the sideline during the singing of the national anthem.INJURIESJets linebacker David Harris continued his playing streak after being questionable with a bruised shoulder. He started his 117th straight regular-season game.Bengals tight end Tyler Eifert was out, still recovering from an ankle injury in the Pro Bowl. He was replaced in the starting lineup by C.J. Uzomah.THATS RIGHTThe Jets rotated backups Ben Ijalana and Brent Qvale at right tackle with starter Breno Giacomini out for at least six weeks with a back injury.FORTES DEBUTMatt Forte, signed as a free agent in the offseason, ran for 96 yards on 22 carries for the Jets, and caught five passes for 59 yards.FOLKS MISSESFolks missed extra point went wide right after a 15-yard touchdown catch by Decker with 9:38 left in the first half -- ending a streak of 312 straight made PATs.Folk had set the NFL record for most extra points without a miss with 322 overall, including the playoffs. The reliable veteran, who held off Duke rookie Ross Martin in training camp, also had a 22-yard attempt blocked in the first quarter by Margus Hunts tip of a low kick.---AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org and http://twitter.com/AP-NFL Jeff Bagwell Jersey . -- Vincent Lecavalier got everything but the desired result in his return to Tampa Bay. Jimmy Wynn Astros Jersey . -- Eastern Kentucky thrives off creating havoc for others. http://www.baseballastrosproshop.com/carlos-correa-astros-jersey/ . 9. Price, heading to the 2014 Olympics for Canada, was named the First Star after posting wins in three starts with a 1.00 goals-against average and a .971 save percentage. George Springer Astros Jersey . Most important, perhaps, it went off without a hitch. Organizers poked a little fun at the now-infamous opening ceremony gaffe that saw only four out of five snowflakes open up into rings, leaving the Olympics logo one ring short. Nolan Ryan Jersey . Its sharpness matched my mind. This was no night to go to sleep. For 21 years South African cricket fans lived in a twilight world of implausible allegiances. They supported Manchester United or Spurs, Wales when they played rugby. Some went the other way, giving the traditional New Years fixture between Western Province and Transvaal at Newlands a cachet it probably didnt deserve.Some of us - count me in this group - invented traditions and affiliations on the flimsiest evidence. Embarrassing as it now sounds, I supported Mike Gattings England as they romped through Australia in 1986-87, because I was born in Hendon, a suburb in north-west London.A year later, huddling around a small black-and-white Philips television set, I watched Will Carlings England defeat Australia 28-19 at Twickenham. A South African cricketing alternative wasnt yet in sight, and so I cheered when Simon Halliday scored Englands victory-clenching try. I had to support someone. What else was there to do?At the time I lived in a post-graduate digs in Cape Town, nursing my bursary with exaggerated care. Most mornings I went out onto the balcony of our flat to look at the harbour, where nothing much was going on. Once a week a big white Safmarine container vessel from Hamburg or Southampton moored in port, but for the most part the basin was dead, save for the trawler fleet and the odd careworn freighter.Squeezed tight by the trade, cultural and sporting boycott, Cape Town was not the chichi paradise it has become. If anything, the sleep from which it suffered seemed to be getting deeper. This was no place for an adventurous young man.Three years later I was living in London, stringing for a leftie South African weekly. They asked me to cover a match at Lords between a Transvaal Invitation XI and the MCC. The visitors were a good young side, but there was something vaguely clandestine about it all. Lords was empty that chilly midweek day, the concessions closed. The contest was devoid of tradition or large meaning. Cricket on the moon.A left-arm seamer called Graham Yates had Mike Atherton caught and bowled, and a young prodigy called Victor Vermeulen - later to tragically break his neck diving into a swimming pool - caught the eye.With Gattings ill-conceived rebel tour to South Africa a thing of the past, much of the cricket-loving world was waiting to see if South Africa would be readmitted to the ICC. It was surely too much to ask that they might also sneak into the 1992 World Cup.A couple of heady months later I discovered that the problem for a homesick South African adrift in London was that there was nowhere to watch your team when they were miraculously readmitted to the world game. The lightning 1991 tour to India had come, and gone and in search of World Cup cricket from Australasia, I pounded the Kilburn High Road, finding nothing but camping shops and dingy Irish pubs. Surely one of them would show cricket? Cold and tired, eventually I found one, dragging my girlfriend inside. We nursed our beers and watched, aghast, as New Zealands Gavin Larsen and Chris Harris tied us up in knots. It was a hopeless case, an excruciating comedown after the magic of beating Australia in South Africas opening World Cup game at the SCG.The best thing about the 92 World Cup was the overwhelming sense of gratitude. People were so happy that they cried. Steve Tshwete, the minister of sport elect, cried on Kepler Wessels shoulder in the SCG dressing room, while Kepler cried himself. Ali Bacher cried. People you wouldnt have thought of as criers had a good blub.One Sunday afternoon two years later, walking on the turf at Lords after South Africa had won the first Test by 356 runs, I cried. They were vaguely embarrassed, private tears but the game had been so emotional, so memorable - Fanie de Villiers torturing Craig White, Jonty Rhodes swatting Angus Fraser into the Mound Stand for six - that I didnt know what else to do. We were back. It aroused emotions too subtle and rare to name.Later during that series I watched the best innings Ive ever seen from a Soouth African in the post-readmission period: Daryll Cullinans 94 in a losing cause at The Oval.dddddddddddd After Lords, the teams went to Headingley, where Peter Kirsten and Graeme Hick scored tons in a drawn Test. Back in London, de Villiers, the hero of Sydney earlier that year, was foolish enough to hit Devon Malcolm square on the helmet. You guys are going to pay for this, Malcolm is reputed to have said. You guys are history.With four ducks and six single-figure scores, Malcolm gutted the South African second innings. Riding the steep bounce with courage and delicacy, only Cullinan stood firm. Some South Africans jabbed their bat down on yorkers after they were bowled; the top order scuttled back to the pavilion like the three blind mice. Cullinan was last out to Darren Gough, England galloping home by eight wickets on the fourth day to square the series.The next time South Africa played England was in Centurion, the ground close to the Jukskei River and a magnet for rain. A debut went in that first Test to Shaun Pollock, a rangy fast bowler, who, when he batted, hit the ball with careless aplomb.A year later a South Africa cap was given to Herschelle Gibbs at Eden Gardens in Kolkata. There have been more important players for South Africa in the last 25 years - Jacques Kallis grim charm, Makhaya Ntinis unflagging energy - but no two players pleased the aesthetes through the nineties and across the cusp of the fresh decade like Pollock and Gibbs.Behind this all, a darker current. On that very tour of India in 1996-97, Bacher foisted the Mohinder Armanath benefit game on a weary party at the end of the tour. The players were furious and eager to get home. Their flirtation with the possibility of throwing that game came to fruition on their next tour to India, where Hansie Cronje seduced Gibbs and others to underperform in the five-match ODI series, besmirching the sport.Until a revisionist history of the world game in the 1990s is published, well never know quite how rife match-fixing was. It is safe to say, however, that other boards handled their scandals entirely differently.On the field itself, a theme was taking shape. South Africa were losing or drawing Tests at home they might have been expected to win, while they were winning away when they might reasonably have been expected to lose. Pollock came to the fore in taking five for 37 against Pakistan in Faisalabad in 1997 (Pat Symcox scoring 55, 81, and taking 3 for 8 in the Pakistan second innings) as the hosts couldnt manage the 145 needed for victory. In 2000, Cronjes men won Tests in Mumbai (with a largely pace attack) and Bangalore. Tests were later won in Karachi (2007) in a victorious series, as well as in Ahmedabad and Nagpur on consecutive drawn series in India.South Africa have always been handy at winning away and the golden period was forged when Graeme Smith and Mickey Arthur managed to cocoon the side from increasingly dogged political interference to win back to back away series in England and Australia across six months in 2008. There have been big series wins (take the 5-0 drubbing of West Indies in 1998-99) but no more cherished prize sits on the mantelpiece of the South African game.For all the moments of magic - who will ever forget de Villiers, legs akimbo, tossing the Glenn McGrath lob into the air in 1994? - South African cricket is a protean, difficult-to-understand beast, with an almost perverse ability to confound. How, for example, can a side as well-rounded as the 1999 team to the World Cup in England contrive to lose it? Perhaps Winston Churchills famous quote about Russia brings us closer to understanding. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, but perhaps there is a key. In South Africas case that key is surely to be found in an increasingly settled country, less at odds with itself than it once was. We live in hope. ' ' '