By Tom Rock
Eric Mangini announced this morning that Chad Pennington is the starting quarterback this weekend. Following his evaluation during the last two days, Mangini said he liked Pennington's decision-making as well as his play-making, pointing to his 5-yard scramble on third-and-5 ("Classic Chad," he said) and the Jets' final TD and 2-point conversion with no time remaining.
Mangini said it was tempting to not make an announcement -- "very tempting" -- but he wanted to "move forward and get this issue behind us."
Mangini also noted that Jonathan Vilma will not practice today and will undergo further tests on his knee, injured during the game. Vilma had denied reports that he was injured, calling his sporadic playing time on Sunday a coach's decision. Mangini agreed, saying he's the coach and he made the decision, but that it was based on the injury impacting Vilma's performance.
Comments (17)
Mangini goes from Mangenius to ManKotite, what use does leaving Pennington in at this point in the season have?
I hope this is a joke
Wow. I'm in shock. I guess the editors won't be needing that sidebar I offered on Ray Lucas' experiences with the squad in 1999.
Jet fans seem to think there are only a few games left to check out Kellon. Even if Chad starts the next 3 games, Kellon can start 6 games including one vs. New England.
sure is nice being a Pats fan
Hey there's always next year!!!! Go Giants!!
what the F this is so stupid, every team have made change in there qb position if that qb is weak and chad is weak, that was many years ago chad gave us a chance to see the afc champion and those days are gone long gone, wake the f up give us hope we need to play the other qb to see if we need to draft a qb the qb there should be 5 good one coming out this yr if we had cutler would we still be waiting
the story of sunday will be the amount of empty seats.
third and ten with chad throwing a 5 yard out pattern.
well worth the effort of satellite parking.
Chad is not the problem, but Bob Sutton might be. If the Defense can not stop the run it's over. And what's going on in the second half this year. You can not play prevent defense when your'e loosing. Common... fire Sutton and bring in somebody who knows the game. He's not doing the job.
There are many problems, and CHAD is definitely one of them. How many INTs did he throw the last few weeks? How many were returned for TDs? How many were in the 4th qtr? How many were on drives to potentially tie or take the lead? Yes, the defense has its problems, but in their losses (excluding the Patriots), they gave up 20 to the Ravens, 17 to Buffalo, 35 to the Giants, 16 to the Eagles, and 38 to the Bengals. 35 and 38 points are high, but the others are not, and Chad could have won those games if he made better decisions and had a better arm. He can't put them in the end zone when it counts (except at garbage time with a jump ball vs the Bengals). The team needs an overhaul, and Chad is certainly one of the problems
I seem to be the only one who noticed the extreme improvement in run defense on plays where Sione Pouha was in at nose. Dwayne Robertson is a bust, and he should be the spot fill in. Pouha should be the starter.
Everyone keeps focusing on chad as the big problem. Granted he has made some poor decisions with the last 3 games 4th quarter interceptions. But when you take a step back, especially this last game the offensive coordinator had called Coles to run the same route 3 times in a row. Thats a pattern my 2 year old nephew could figure out. The big problem with the jets right now if the defense, or lack there of. The Jets run defense has to be the joke of the league, with even the pass happy Bengals running up and down the field on us. Mangini has to scrap the 3:4 defense for 2 reasons, A - its not working, and B- we don;t have the right personel. To run a good 3:4 defense, you need a big nose tackle, last time I checked Dwayne Robertson was the most undersized nose tackle in the NFL. Secondly, we are wasting away the career of Jonathan Vilma, a once feared middle linebacker, now relegated to picking up the blocks of offensive lineman that Robertson can't handle. If you want to fix the Jets, change the defense, then let the offense take care of itself.
I don't think they gain anything except experience for clemmons by putting him in there... If you look at the numbers Chad isn't even doing that poor of a job, infact if you look they are unable to run on first down which puts them behind everytime they start a series.
Yes there have been pics, and a couple bad ones, but these are happeinging when the defence knows they are throwing because we are behind, or calling the same play over and over again (see last sunday) Chad has an amazing 3rd down percentage right now, its better than mannings and brady's. Chad's the reason the Jets O is able to sustain any drives at all with such a terrible run attack, Clemmons will only make the offense less potent, he won;t be able to match what chad has done on 3rd down at this point, and his arm will not scare opponents into improving our rushing numbers on first down.
The real problem is the defense, end of story. The Jets are starting with poor field position because our defense cannot provide us with good position, and when you get poor position and can't run the ball, you're not going to score a lot. Also our D is just giving up huge chunks to the run, how many 100+ yard rushers this year so far has it allowed?
Chad is a warrior and deserves to stay starting, you cannot pin this on him, yes he's made some mistakes, but so far he's actually played very well.... Not so true for the D.
Correction Chad Supporters,
He is playing as best as he can but not well. He is easy to defend against because his arm is shot and he can't scramble. Once he started with the INTS (many of them flailing ducks) he lost his main advantage (smart, not giving up the turnovers).
The Jets are going NOWHERE! Sure, the D is bad but how can it hurt to change QBs now????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Light a spark ManKotite, try something! What is it with Jets coaches and the reluctance to change? Even Tuna stayed too long with Mirer.
Mangina won't change a thing. He's clueless.
Chad is not the problem... The problems lay with the defense(front 3) and the offensive calling. BrianS needs to change up the offensive calls. For example the past few weeks the defense has let the opposing team back into games in the 4th quarter. When Chad gets in on offense, the play calling sucks. If a CB knows they can jump the routes, and they have the past 4 weeks. And we the fans know the CB is going to jump the route, why wouldn't they have the WR to do a double move and run a post for a big play. I betcha future CB's would think twice before jumping anymore routes. Also bottom line, Sutton needs to take a backseat and Mangini needs to start calling def plays.
Chad has not been at his best, but he is far from the real problem.
As most have said, the defense is downright awful. They can't stop the run, can't stop the pass and can't create turnovers because of bad defensive play-calling (no perception of what the offense is doing and a failure to disguise their own scheme) and mismatched personnel (Vilma, Robertson and Ellis are wasted in the 4-3, Thomas and Harris are suited to the 3-4).
The offense suffers from the similar problems - predictability and poor play-calling. How many times are our opponents' defense quoted in Monday's paper saying that they knew exactly what was coming? How many 4-7 yards out patterns can you call before defenses are jumping the routes? How many times do run a shotgun draw to Washington for 2-3 yards on 2nd or 3rd and long? Why do you shy away from throwing the deep ball when Chad throws it fairly well? Remember, a deep ball is thrown with more arc than zip, which is Chad's strength. He just can't zip it in for 7-15 yard strikes or through traffic.
As for Clemens, I've watched every preseason game the last two years and the Baltimore game this year. Despite his 70+% completion rate this preseason (inflated by nervous dump-offs), he simply lacks the accuracy of a starting NFL QB. He should be a career backup and the coaching staff probably knows it. He has likely been taking a lot of snaps with the first-team offense because of Chad's ankle injury and has shown nothing special. The only reason I would want him to be QB this year is to prove how average he is, so the Jets will draft a QB next year (to possibly take over for Chad in 2009), in what supposed to be a strong QB draft class. The worst case scenario is if the Jets commit the next two plus years trying to find out if Clemens is the guy.
If so, I'll still root for Chad when he moves to KC to lead Herm to multiple playoff apearances again. Chad's a great player that has brought heart and excitement and the most success of any Jets QB in the last few decades. He deserves all of the support Jets fans can give.