Elephant In The Room: Our QB

mangini should just give clemens a full season. the giants gave eli soo much time, all i'm asking for is one full season with a solid offensive line and healthy receivers. we know pennington cannot and will not be the answer, his injuries just proved too difficult to overcome. so we might as well find out if clemens is the one, and if not, draft a franchise qb in '09. clemens has the potential, he displays moxy and leadership when down late in the game. thats all you can really ask for in a young qb playing in his first 8 games, not stats, especially when those around him aren't helping.

 

I disagree, Troy. First, to be a QB in this league, you better be mentally tough or get out and knit quilts for a living. An open competition is the very best move that can be made. It means who ever the QB is on day one; that is who gives us the best chance of winning. An open competition also means the eventual #2 guy will have learned and played hard to try and win the job; it makes the back-up that much more ready if we need him.

Last year is an enigma at QB; it is very difficult if not impossible to adequately grade each QB because nearly all of the time they were running for their lives or getting smeared into the grass. Chad's injury really set him back performance-wise and Kellen showed flashes of being pretty good, but the line play made it difficult to say with certainty that he was our true future.

I have no problem with the open competition. I will say that if Chad gets the nod over Clemens, Clemens will probably get dealt in the off-season and we will be trying to draft a high QB in next spring's draft. I hope that is not the case because it just puts our playoff and SB dreams further back on the burner.

 

Elephant In The Room isn't the right term. The elephant is uselly something people don't talk about. In the case the qb subject has been talked about just a little bit

 

There is no elephant in the room. Clemens steps up and is the guy for the next few years or the Jets will continue to be a bottom feeder team with an occassional season where they make the upper ranks of NFL mediocrity.

 

Agree, Chad isn?t the answer, if Clemens can?t win the Job against Chad in his third!!! year, he?s not the answer either, and we need to draft a QB next year. No need to hand KC the Job.

 

IMO, an open competition at QB,says the FO/CS still does not have great confidence in clemens taking the reigns at the position.i think they should have annointed him the starter, for better or for worse, and see what they have in this kid.

 

If the coaching staff were to anoint Clemens as the starter, that would be, for them, to bet THEIR carriers that a QB who looked shaky at best last season will develop into a true NFL QB. In other words, if he failed, they would be out the door with him. It seems like this coaching staff is playing C.Y.A. (Cover Your Ass) in this situation. They are not confident enough in Clemens to be a full time starter BUT they know that they will be average (at best) with Chad. Right now Chad is a "Hold the Fort" type of player. If Clemens cannot get the job done, we have a QB that can get us 8 (or so) wins while allowing us to get a new STARTING (Draft or Free agent) QB for next season.

 

I assume you meant careers, not carriers. I think there is much to the logic of your post. It sure looks CYA to me, but there are two other aspects of this worth noting.

One is that the approach is also CYA regarding the Chad Fans. They would likely be screaming all off season if Mangini had named Clemens the starter.

Two is that they failed to make a move in the Off Season to widen the competition, or to replace Chad on the roster, which would have had the benefit of avoiding the worst case scenario of finding Chad once again behind center, a puke worthy concept if there ever was one.

As cynical and skeptical as I can be, I still have a hard time believing that the CS, over two years in which Chad continued to decline, has not yet seen enough to know whether Clemens is, based on what they know today, the better option going forward. If they already know that to be the case, then the so called competition may merely be a smokescreen.

If they DON'T know that he is better, then two other cocnerns are raised. First is why didn't they figure that one out? It's not like they have any real reason to think Chad is going to get better this year. THAT side of the equation is pretty much set in stone due to his age and declining physical condition. How come they have not seen enough already? They weren't looking? They thought it was up in the air whether in the third off season Clemens has been with the team he might or might not learn enough, practice enough, to finally surpass Chad? That does not sound reasonable to me. Because of the alternative, of course. The Plan B, which is turning the ball over to Chad.

The second concern relates back to the point made above about not having made a move to bring in somebody else.

So, despite my skepticism, unless we are witnessing total incompetency here, in fact they intend to play Clemens, and the competition is merely a smokescreen.

I wish I really believed that...

 

Anyone have a line of sight as why we haven't tried to sign any free agents?

Laugh if you want but is it possible that we could upgrade by signing any of the following?


Culpepper
Garcia - still unsigned?
Leftwich

 

Confidence has to be earned, so does a starting QB job in the NFL. Nobody hands it to you. If Pennington is so bad as you all say then Clemens should be able to beat him out, no? Some of you hate Chad so much you just want them to hand the job to someone else, even if he sucks, just because he isn't Chad. It doesn't work that way, you have to earn it. So you can all keep crying for another few months, it's not going to help.

 

I would take all three if we could get rid of Chad!

 

At this point Chad can not even hold the fort. He was benched because he put himself there last year. He earned the right to be benched.

 

I think all this gnashing of the teeth is bad for the mental health. TGG should get a discount on rubber teeth protectors for the Chad-haters. They just can't wait until the competition is over.

 

Chad wasn't benched because he earned the pine. The team was in shambles -- and the season was fully over -- so, it was a great opportunity to give Kellen some trial by fire.

Nobody was going to save the woeful 1-7 '07 Jets. Not Elway, and not Joe Montana.

I think Mangini did the right thing in putting Kellen in, even though it was still Early Days in his development.

 

You and Mr. Beaman appear that you hate Chad more than you care about the NYJs. None of those guys are an improvement over what we have. Ratliff has more upside than any of them. Just watch him in training camp. You want to talk about an arm, and he's already on the team!

 

Garcia is fighting for more money (perhaps 2 million...?!), and the Bucs are resisting giving it to him.

So you think the Bucs will drink your purple Kool Aid and just swallow Chad's $6.2 million contract this year so they don't have to pay that effing Garcia his $2 million!!

You should throw away your Kool Aid, Mr. Donttasemebro, and try to find some coffee.

 

Chad should have been benched after the first 14-17 loss to the Mighty bills. Chad was allowed to end our games with his pick six's against the Giants, Eagles , Bengals and Bills. The time for Kellens development was in week 5 because it was more than evident that Chad was done then. Out of insane loyalty they let him continue to play. Now is a great time to give Kellen his trial by fire because he will at least be in a situation where he can succeed. If Chad had played half decent he would have not been benched at all.

 

Culpepper can throw and he can run better than Chad on one leg. Plus as of the start of the 07 season he actually had a higher Carer passer rating than Chad. That stupid stat is Chads claim to fame. Garcia is better than Chad. Period. If Simms is healty he is better than Chad and Leftwich can at least throw the ball. All of the above are better options. Chad can not throw, run or run a two minute drill. Please explain why these other guys are worse options?

 

We should have swallowed the cool aid and gotten rid of Chad by any means necessary.