"Chad Pennington walked into the interview room wearing the matching cap and T-shirt of a leading sports apparel company rather than the team-issued gear he usually prefers.

That was the first giveaway.

The next clue came when Pennington referred to his 20-game Dolphins tenure, including the franchise's first playoff trip in seven years, in the past tense.

"I've got a lot of emotions running through my head right now," Pennington said Wednesday. "I'm trying to sift through all these thoughts."

One of those thoughts, no doubt: This is Chad Henne's team now.

Even Pennington, with a contract that expires after this season and a third career surgery on his throwing shoulder scheduled for Friday in Birmingham, Ala., seemed to grasp the finality of the moment.

Oh, at 33, he may make yet another comeback attempt from the torn anterior capsule he is facing. Already a two-time winner of the NFL's Comeback Player of the Year Award, he will re-evaluate his athletic prospects once Dr. James Andrews' scalpel enables him to lift his right arm to comb his hair and brush his teeth again.

But if Henne, the 2008 second-round draft pick out of Michigan, clicks the way this organization believes he will, only a backup job would await Pennington in South Florida. Eventually he could return as a member of the coaching staff, but it is still far too early to connect those dots."