Damn straight, fire Bill Parcells NOW! ....I may have taken this comment out of the void with no reference to any context at all.
Ray Lucas threw for 14 TD Passes in nine games after Testaverde's injury, which is more than Zach Wilson has thrown in 2022 & 2023 combined. When his predecessor, Rick Mirer, only threw five TDs in six games, he was promptly benched. Not a fair statement at all.
Except neither of those guys was the "Backup plan". The punter had to fill in until the Jets traded for Mirer, and you're being loose with the definition of "promptly" as most of us were ready to bench Mirer after two games (considering what we have had around here lately, 6 games would be considered light speed, so fair enough, but it felt like a decade at the time). At any rate, having the Punter and the Kickoff Return Guy as your QBs does not qualify as a backup plan.
Appreciate the exception there. Wasn't Tupa only used immediately after the injury and then replaced in the 4th quarter of the game due to the wacky Third String Emergency QB rules at the time?
Yes he was. I remember that game, and I remember that Tupa was WAY better than Mirer and I remember thinking why the fuck did they not just leave Tupa in there at QB?
IIRC and I may not be 100% on all this parcells was coach and GM. he traded foley in the offseason and traded for mirer who was a recent 1st round bust. we went into game 1 with mirer as the backup QB. vinny went down. mirer was bad so he pulled him for tupa who came in and threw 2 TDs and almost came back and won it. we started mirer from game 2 for 6 weeks then switched to lucas who was 3rd string
I don’t think the jets got Mirer onto the roster until after the game. Vinny going down was a much worse kick in the balls than this year by the way. Not even comparable.
he was on the roster because i remember we traded foley to make room for him. As I seen others write though I think i had it backwards where tupa came in 1st and then mirar had to come in due to some dumb rule that would have left us without a punter if he didn't or somehting like that
He's right. We had Mirer going into the season. If I recall, we put him in to replace Vinny and he threw an Int, so we benched him for Tupa.
HERE is the boxscore of the game in question: New England Patriots at New York Jets - September 12th, 1999 | Pro-Football-Reference.com Mirer WAS on the roster for the game in which Testaverde got hurt. He replaced Tupa in the 4th Quarter due to the aforementioned Wacky Emergency QB rules at the time.
and there was no reddit or twitter back then but there was newspapers, radio shows, message boards etc and I don't ever remember anyone ever saying "parcells should have had a better backup" I do remember people saying to bench mirer for lucas earlier though or to start tupa.
they had Zolak, the patriots clown, in training camp as Testaverde's backup. He was terrible and they cut him and traded for Mirer I believe the last week of the preseason so there was actually a lot of talk about the backup QB given how badly Zolak looked before the season and Mirer was Parcells’ desperate answer
Yes Mirer was on the roster but when Vinny went down it was Tupa who came in directly and then Mirer later due to the rules in place at the time…I remember that game…ugh
That game was painful. Parcells should have stuck with Tupa, at least for the rest of that game, rather than going to Mirer when he was able to under the emergency QB rules at the time. Tupa did an unbelievable job coming in off the bench to try to salvage an otherwise disastrous afternoon. Honestly, our punter that day played much better in relief of the starter who went down with an achilles than our #2 overall pick did coming in during the exact same situation.
