The Pennington question
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- December
- 26
It appears Kellen Clemens’s rib has healed enough that he will start the regular season finale against Kansas City. Which means Chad Pennington, the QB once compared to Joe Montana, may have played his last game in a green uniform. In less than a week, Tanenbaum and Co. will have to start pondering the Pennington question—that is, should he stay or should he go?
When Mangini finally handed the reins to Clemens—which he did far too late, and the Jets are reaping the consequences now—I was hoping this wouldn’t be an issue come offseason. Clemens was supposed to be so impressive that the Jets could wave bye bye to Chad without a second thought. Instead, the new guy has inspired anything but confidence. Despite the 30+ extra yards of range on his arm he’s performed worse than Chad, throwing 10 interceptions against four touchdowns. Is the team ready to entrust him with a full 16-game season? Tough to say. Even though he hasn’t done anything yet, you can’t give up on him already. It’s way too soon. Which is why Mangini should have gone to him earlier, so we’d have more than seven games to evaluate him. Eli Manning is in Year 4 of his evaluation phase. I swear, the guy’s going to be the first 35-year-old to have fans saying, “You know, I see some flashes in this kid. Give him some more time.” So Clemens deserves a bigger audition.
But what do you do with Chad? They could keep him as a backup next year. He’d be mighty expensive and probably unhappy, but at least you’d know there was somebody competent back there if Clemens gets hurt.
They could trade him, as Debbie suggested. There is a market for him, as much as his bashers would tell you he’s the worst QB in the league. He could start tomorrow for, just off the top of my head, Minnesota, Kansas City, Miami, Chicago, and Atlanta. Not to mention places he could be a backup behind a fragile/tenuous starter and win the starting job by Week 6. The Jets wouldn’t get much for him, but it would be a little something and he’d be off the cap.
They could cut him too if they don’t like the offers.
The one thing I hope they don’t do is give him the starting job back. Don’t laugh—he’s a good guy and a hard worker that his coaches and teammates love. If management thinks Clemens isn’t the answer and doesn’t want to draft a quarterback, I could see them sticking with the loyal soldier for another season. But let’s face it, his days of starting as a Jet should be over. We all know what he can do by this point. He’ll complete a ton of passes every week, engineer a couple long, slow drives, and put somewhere around 14 points on the board. That’s not enough to be a good team’s starter. Since the two shoulder surgeries he’s just become too limited. Before, his accuracy, decision making, and leadership were enough to make up for middling arm strength. But those qualities aren’t enough to make up for terrible arm strength, which he has now.
Before the surgeries Chad was a top 12 quarterback. I thought the Jets had their leader for the next decade. Unfortunately he’s not that guy anymore. Tanenbaum needs to decide soon what to do about that.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 at 4:48 am by Jake Thomases.
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Jane McManus 
That’s a tough call because of the all the questions that still abound. But I’d have to agree Chad should not be back as a starter. He’s purely a WestCoast QB. He needs to be in that specific offense to be successful.
Thanks for an excellent summary of the Pennington situation. He’s got upper-echelon skills in almost every area of QB play; unfortunately, his post-surgeries arm strength is simply insufficient for an NFL quarterback. For all the accuracy and high ratings of the last two weeks, they scored 9 offensive points, and came up empty on 5 of 7 trips to the red zone. Chad has been a good soldier for the Jets, and I understand his desire to move on if he can’t start here, but I’ve seen enough to reluctantly conclude that he’ll never again be a high-level NFL QB. Unfair, a shame, but that’s the sad reality.
Because of their poor record, the Jets should be able to go either way, draft a top quarterback and trade Chad, or draft players to fill holes and build for the future. Since the Jets are much better than their record, a few key draft picks could make an enormous difference next year.
Nice post on Pennington and I couldn’t agree more. He is done as a starter for the Jets, but he certainly has value for another team. We should still be able to get a 3rd or 4th round pick for him. Add a 2nd for Vilma and we can get some valuable picks to build the offensive and defensive lines. The defense has a great core with Rhodes, Revis, Harris and Elam, let’s get some pass rushers! The offense needs a serious spark by adding some play-makers and beefing up the left guard and right tackle positions!
Feel free to visit my blog as well, Jetstream on www.nj.com.
In football, the QB gets more credit when a team wins than he deserves. He gets more of the blame when they lose. That’s life in the NFL. I don’t think that I am the only one who sees the problem with the Jets, but I feel like I am.
Last year Mangini got the team to 10-6 on alot of lucky bounces and Chad Pennington’s right arm. No running game to speak of, unable to stop the run on defense and some iffy play calling were covered up by Coles, Cotchery, Baker, Washington and Pennington. Most of the time throwing with real pressure in his face.
During the off season, what did they do to fix the problem? They drafted a linebacker and a corner, got a better running back and dispatched what might have been the best 20% of the o-line.
Hello!? Since I played my first game at 10 years old I’ve been told that football is won and lost at the line of scrimmage. I may be in the minority on this but I still believe it. A quality o-line makes good running backs great and great backs Hall of Famers. A Great Running back behind a poor line is just a target.
Same is true for the QB. You will not know what you have until they can stand up in the pocket and not have to duck and run. It has to be hard to throw like that. How many times do you have so see Pennington or Clemens flattened by somebody coming untouched to figure it out?
Stopping the run on the other end and being able to apply pressure on the other QB is probably even more important. The committment to the 3-4 without the personnel to pull it off is killing this team. Without the Ted Washington/Tony Seragusa/Warren Sapp type that requires a double team and still stuffs up the middle O-line men are free to block linebackers. I love what Dwane Robertson has given but he isn’t a 3-4 nose tackle.
Was the problem this year Pennington? I don’t think so. If you want to see if he can throw the long ball… give him time to drop back, set and throw. If something isn’t done up front there will be a few more Jets QBs who will go down as guys that had potential but were hurt or couldn’t go deep.