I guess I don't see why Pennington should be graded on a curve. It would be nice if Pennington raised his game against a top defense more than very occasionally, rather than being victimized by it; it does happen, you know, and that to me is the sign of a top QB. You can debate the difference between "mediocre" and "good," I suppose, but there is no question that an 8 game stretch of 6 TDs and 10 INTs is hardly good play - even in your ratings (which I view as somewhat generous) you had him as bad or horrible in 3 of 8 games.
Just once I'd like to have some kind of reasonable debate with the rabid Pennington fans as to why they feel as they do. You usually get one of two ridiculous strawman arguments the "see Chad haters, what do you think now?" or "would you rather have Ramsey at QB?" As to the first point, in all the storm of threads about Pennington last week I can't recall anyone actually saying they thought he was going to stink up the joint yesterday. He usually plays well against the dregs of the league, especially in conditions like yesterday. Next week he'll probably play pretty well too. But the games he's going to have to win(and play well in) to have a shot at being the Jets QB next year are the Buffalo and Miami games. I'm not even going to address the Ramsey question other then to say once again that I'm fairly confident that there is not one Jet fan that wants this guy at QB.
We Pennington detractors want to see him put those numbers up against teams like the Patriots, Bears and Jags. Anybody can throw for 280 against the Texans. We want to see him bring the Jets from down like Vince Young did for the Titans yesterday when the team is not playing well and we need our leader to step up. All the teams that we have to beat have Leaders who will do that and Pennington has not show that he is capable of doing that against the teams we have to beat to get to the next level.
