The thing that kills me about Pennington is that I feel Herm and Hackett torpedoed his career and forced him into a dink-and-dunk mentality that he could never shake off later in his career. Chad did not have to be Bernie Kosar; he threw a terrific deep ball and no less of an authority than Randy Moss said Pennington threw the best deep ball of anyone he worked with in his career. Instead, Herm had him throwing 2 yard out patterns on 3rd and 10.
Remember how Chad used to hit Coles 20 yards downfield on the hands, perfectly in stride? Was a thing of beauty. That 2002 season after Chad came in was one of my most entertaining seasons. _
I was not, born in 89'. I have seen a lot of his game tapes/highlights though. It was a hard decision and I almost went with him to be honest. Had to go with Chad, I grew up on him, Chrebet and Martin so I'm clearly biased in this regard though.
I picked Chad but I just decided to look at this stats. High completion percentage (as we all know him for). But while with us, here were his TD:INT ratios: 22:6 13:12 16:9 2:3 17:16 10:9 I certainly didn't remember those seasons where he threw about as many interceptions as he did touchdowns. That's quite a few interceptions for someone who was so accurate.
Sanchez better than O'Brien? There are times when I just KNOW you are saying things to keep interest and stir the pot. This is unequivocally one of those times.
Explain. It's not like O'Brien was Vick back there, running out of the pocket and confusing the line. He was as immobile a pocket passer as the team has ever had, yet he got crushed constantly. So please explain how the line stinking was a myth?
And if you went only by statistics, Troy Aikman was a chump. All you need is eyes to see that Sanchez was not as good as the statistics would indicate.
Do you have statistics of how many times he was considered in the grasp and sacked? If you don't, it's pure speculation and complete BS. I watched every one of those games and I don't remember all that many times I zat there saying 'damn, that was a fast whistle'.
I remember when he hit Coles in stride on a 55 yard TD pass against San Diego, with Coles taking it from the defender. Pennington gets a bad rap about his arm, particularly early in his career.
do you have statistics that show how many times it was the OL responsible for his sacks? If you don't, it's pure speculation and complete BS. go through the posts in this thread, it has been explained. the buttfumble game we were getting killed anyway for many reasons that didn't include the QB. That just put the cherry on top. O'Brien had a million stinkers including playoff losses and games that could clinch playoff games.
It is difficult for me to lose an argument since it rarely happens. you want specific examples? 1985: 31-0 loss at LA Raiders, only 2 INTs but last I checked leading an O to zero pts is bad. last 5 games of 1986- Offense was beyond brutal. In those 5 games(I think if we win one of them we win a div title) he led our high powered offense to 9.4 PPG. a week later w/ same cast and new QB Pat Ryan led our O to 28 pts and a playoff wins. 1986 playoffs at Cleveland- led O to 13 pts in 5 qtrs. of play and the lone TD was a 1 play drive on a Freeman 25 yd TD run. had a million chances to lead us to GW pts and looked completely lost. when has Mark ever looked lost for an entire playoff game? 1988 opener, 28-3 loss at NE, 0 INTs but against it's hard to win scoring 3 pts. 1989 started 4 games of 5 games losing streak. O averaged FOUR PPG but nah he didn't looked lost. 1989 was so bad he was benched for 2 different starting QBs, neither of which were Jets heading into that season and one they picked up during the season. 1990 30-7 loss to Buf, 39-3 loss to SD, 24-7 loss to Pitt, 17-3 to Miami. how can you win games scoring 7, 3, 7, 3 consistently? 1991 20-13 loss at Seattle but Troy Taylor threw TD pass to make score look closer than game was. led O to 6 pts. w/ team at 7-5 leads us to 3 game losing streak: led O to 9.7 PPG including w/ what we thought was the playoffs on the line leading O to 3 pts at HOME vs. an awful NE team in week 15. Luckily Miami lost and we won the next week to go 8-8 and make playoffs. 1992 vs. SF: 31-14 loss, trailed 31-0 in 4th qtr, led 2 garbage time TD drives. I am sure I can dig up more.
some of us understand the game better than others. I saw all involved in this poll, Chad was better by a wide margin. Kenny played through injuries and was ineffective, Chad lost seasons but when he played he played well and led us to postseason. I think Chad's '02 was the 2nd best individual season for a QB behind Vinny '98. The funny thing is Coles always used to jump to catch passes even when he didn't have to and Chad would get killed on here for making Coles jump when he didn't. I prefer wins to highlight reel plays. Ken had more talent around him in a weaker div and conf and couldn't win a single playoff game. clearly you don't remember b/c Coles was in Washington and he hit Santana Moss in the 2004 WC game.
Giving all of the credit or blame for a win or loss to a QB is kind of silly when he is on the field for less than half of the game (does not play defense or special teams). Even when the QB is on the field there are ten other guys that can potentially screw up each play due to a mental error or nagging injuries slowing them down. Just imagine for a second that Gastineau doesn't get called for rouging the passer and the Jets knock off the Broncos the following week only to lose to the Giants. Not only would O'Brien have won two playoff games but he would have gotten closer to the ring than Todd or Sanchez.
No one is giving all credit or blame, he had the talent to win and he failed and a main reason was b/c he played poorly. Gastineau's penalty hurt them but how about leading the O to even the Cle side of the field in OT? he had chances and failed, led O to 13 pts in 5 qtrs. of play and the lone TD was a 1 play drive w/ a long Freeman TD run. He killed us late in '86 and when he had a chance to play in the playoffs. Had we beaten Cle he still wouldn't have a playoff win b/c Ryan started the KC and Cle games and how would he have gotten us closer to a ring by making the title game which Mark made twice and Todd once? you assume a guy who couldn't do a thing at Cle and was playing awful football was going to go into Den and play well?
People voting for Pennington simply do not understand the basic fact that you are not helping your team when you can't stay on the field. That and that some signficant percentage of them do not even know about O'Brien's career, and have not taken the trouble to learn about it. Those people are making what should be an objective assessment into a skewed and unreliable one. People are entitled to their opinions, but come on.
Junc, I think you make some valid points, but there is one area where I definitely disagree. Saying OBrien playd in a weaker division, or had weaker opponents, is highly misleading. I'd argue that the talent on teams was far less balanced in the '80s. Hence the poor teams were quite poor often and the good teams could often dominate. In the regular season this may have made for some weaker opponents, but come playoff time it meant that only the strong teams were left. Conversely, today there is so much parity that quite a few mediocrities make it into the playoffs AND there are more playoff games today than in days of yore. This is the major problem with comparing the playoff success of Sanchez and OBrien. Even if you're right that OBrien faced easier opponents in the regular season, he faced MUCH harder opponents in the postseason by nature of the fact that it was harder to make the postseason and he had fewer opportunities (marginally) to win games. This really leaves the regular season opponents. Now I can't argue about our (oops, fixed mistake) NONdivisional opponents as my memory is simply not that good, but in the division we faced the dolphins then and the Pats today. In both cases these were serious rivalries and both teams stood in our way to playoff success. Moreover, later on we also faced a rising Buffalo team that ravaged the Jets. I can't recall how many years of OBriens career was played against a really good Bills team, but it was a couple at least. Conversely, there has never really been a team, other than the Pats, that has been consistently good in the "new", colts-less division, although the Jets have had moments. So I'd argue that OBrien and Sanchez likely faces similar opponents in the regular season, given the differences in era, with the possibility that Sanchez had is easier save for two really tough Pats games a year.
Chad Pennington: became full time starter in 2002, played from 2002-2007 started 61 games, 32-29 record in reg season, 2-3 in postseason, led team to division title and 3 overall playoff apps. Ken O'Brien: became full time starter in 1984, played from 19845-1992. started 101 games, 50-55-1, 0-2 in postseason, led team to 3 playoff apps(benched for one of the postseasons) Chad was banged up and that sucked but who would rather have Ken's production over Chad's? Let's look at how teams fared w/o Ken and Chad in those years: 1984-1992(removing replacement games in 1987): 13-21(remove Browning Nagle in 1992 and it's 10-11) win % went from 47% to 38%- 9% change 2002-2007: 11-24 win % went from 52% to 31%- 21% change
The AFC stunk in the 80s, a Tony Eason led mediocre Pats team made a SB. all the big time teams were in the NFC. In Chad's era the AFC was stronger and we had a dynasty team w/in our division and despite that we won a div title becoming the ONLY non Pats team to win in a year Brady was primary starter for NE. we were pretty much always playing for 2nd place in Chad's era and still won a div title. In the O'Brien era every team won a div title EXCEPT the Jets.
There is no way that Chad would throw the ball down the field to Walker and Toon like O'Brein did. No f'ing way.
