I Have A Feeling I Would Have Loved Ken O'Brien

Discussion in 'New York Jets' started by The Dark Knight, May 14, 2020.

  1. Br4d

    Br4d 2018 Weeb Ewbank Award

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    The thing that is key to remember about Ken O'Brien is that he came onto a Jets team that was built for Richard Todd and aging out fast when he arrived. He had the Mark Sanchez experience however he was a better QB and so the wheels did not come off immediately as people like Joe Klecko, Mark Gastineau, Bobby Jackson, Wesley Walker, Mickey Shuler, Joe Fields, Marvin Powell and Dan Alexander aged out.

    1985 was O'Brien's first season as full time starter and all of the guys above were 29 or older and leaving their primes.
     
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  2. championjets69

    championjets69 2008/2009 TGG Darksider Award Winner

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    A Perfect Bio of KOB :mad:
     
  3. Sid Youngelman

    Sid Youngelman Active Member

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    You would have loved Richard Todd more. Tough as nails.
     
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  4. mrjet80

    mrjet80 Well-Known Member

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    A fair opinion.

    I would say the fault as far as the OL goes lies between both O’Brien and his tendency to hold the ball and the OL itself. You’re right they aged out just as O’Brien came into his own.

    However these “high picks on that position every year” you refer to were mostly failures. Mike Haight from Iowa in 1986 only made the team because every single Jets draft pick from that year was cut before the season started and the Jets probably wanted to avoid the stigma of cutting everybody. He was woefully weak for a tackle so they moved him to guard were he was rotated between the starting lineup and second string for a couple of years. Eventually he settled in at LG - was never more than an average starter - and once had to be removed from a game in Miami due to a low blood pressure issue. Needless to say he was a failure of a first round pick. Doug Williams the second round OL that season didn’t make it out of training camp (as I referred to earlier). Dave Cadigan another first round OT taken in 1988 also turned into a failed guard experiment lasting only about 4-5 mostly injury filled years.

    You’re general post however is correct. O’Brien was a decent QB with a good arm but everything had to go right. He could not improvise very well, took too many sacks, and as mentioned in an earlier post his throwing shoulder was damaged beyond repair thanks to a porous OL.
     
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  5. AJW

    AJW Well-Known Member

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    Pennington could scramble Kenny could not.

    Sent from my SM-G986U using Tapatalk
     
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  6. AJW

    AJW Well-Known Member

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    51-45 game was better.

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  7. The Dark Knight

    The Dark Knight Well-Known Member

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    Another Jets QB I know little about. Even less than Ken O'Brien actually. QB'd the Jets from 1976 to 1983 when O'Brien showed up. So the Jets had basically steady QB play from 1976 to 1993 when Boomer took over and I started watching. Todd got the Jets to the AFC Title game where they lost to Miami too, right? That game would have driven me nuts. Unfair field conditions.
     
  8. mrjet80

    mrjet80 Well-Known Member

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    Yes - horrible unfair game. Obviously both teams have to play in the same conditions but the Dolphins knew the rules and also in those days were probably better prepared for the weather conditions. It was their city. It rained all week. There wasn’t 24/7 weather channels and bulletins and doplar radar the way there is today. The Jets knew rain was in the forecast - they had no idea they would be playing in a mud pit.

    The two teams had played only 5 weeks earlier on the same field. A dry, sunny day. An exciting game. The Jets played well but lost 20-19 due to a shaky kicking game. Who knows how the AFC Title game would have turned out if played under those same conditions.
     
  9. Sid Youngelman

    Sid Youngelman Active Member

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    You want to know what Richard Todd was all about? Go to YouTube and look for the Dolphins at the Jets from the regular season of 1981. Todd playing with a broken rib guts out the pain and in heroic fashion throws the winning touchdown pass with no time left on the clock. Watch it. You'll thank me. Todd led the Jets to their first post season in 12 years in that 1981 season. It was a magical year. It was also the birth of the New York Sack Exchange.
     
  10. mrjet80

    mrjet80 Well-Known Member

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    O’Brien didn’t take a snap in 1983. When Todd was traded following the season Pat Ryan the long time back-up was given the starter’s job. The plan had been for Ryan and O’Brien to battle for the starting job in training camp but O’Brien and Gastineau both were arrested at Studio 54 for their part in a brawl. O’Brien lost valuable camp days with the legal issues relating to the incident. With the Jets out of the playoff race towards the end of the season O’Brien was inserted as the starter with an eye towards 1985. So basically Ryan was the starter for the majority of 1984.

    Also Browning Nagle ( another supposed savior ) was named the starter for 1992. He was injured, then came back and completely faltered causing the Jets to go out and get Boomer. The funny thing was the Jets were wooing Reggie White that offseason and it was him who suggested they would be a better team by getting Boomer to play QB. They went out and did just that. White however decided to sign with Green Bay.
     
    #170 mrjet80, May 16, 2020
    Last edited: May 16, 2020
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  11. mrjet80

    mrjet80 Well-Known Member

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    The other 1981 game is on utube as well the tie game at the Orange Bowl. Todd threw 4 TDS in that game. A very young Bob Costas was the commentator.
     
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  12. matt robinson 17

    matt robinson 17 Well-Known Member

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    Game against the 49ers at Shea Todd had 42 completions, 17 to Clark Gaines
     
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  13. jetophile

    jetophile Bruce Coslet's Daughter

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    Another old Jets joke: Ken O'Brien wasn't a bust, but he sure was a statue!

    C'mon, put on your thinking caps. I can't do it all. Besides, I'm cranky because I just woke up and I didn't have my coffee yet. Why don't they have an I haven't had my ☕ yet face? :mad:

    A good friend of mine used to say to me, "Ken O'Brien is a sack of shit. IT'S A PUN." I would get so irritated. Who the F doesn't know what a pun is?
     
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  14. rammagen

    rammagen Well-Known Member

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    Born in Brooklyn seriously though I was a teenager living in South Florida at that time he was good. But you should have seen Matt Robinson play. He had an arm damn he was the qb that never made it he signed with the USFL so he never got a chance after that
     
  15. Biggs

    Biggs Well-Known Member

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    You failed to make the argument. He certainly deserves to be in the Hall of Very good. He wasn't remotely the greatest Jet of them all. Marvin Powell was better than Joe Klecko and nobody is calling for him to be in the HOF.
     
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  16. jetophile

    jetophile Bruce Coslet's Daughter

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    OK, kids, let's have have some Sunday Morning Pain. I'll have the PAIN al dente, with a glass of PAIN, and a side dish of PAIN. Ready? Let's go!

    1) Michael Strahan's first ever NFL career sack was against Ken O'Brien. PAIN.

    2) Ken O'Brien has to be one of the most immobile QBs of the 'modern' era. At least Joe Namath had an excuse. Well, two of them: he was a cripple. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think he had even one rushing TD in his entire NFL career. No, wait, don't. PAIN.

    3) To O'Brien's credit, in later years, that fag Peyton-Don't-Touch-Me-Manning, whose stage father, Rose Thompson Hovick Archie, petitioned the league to institute rule changes specifically to accommodate his inbred spawn (c'mon, his head is the size of a bus), and Tom Cheat, who you can't breathe on, who doesn't have Archie Manning as a father, and why would he need him considering the entire NFL is this giant, hovering helicopter asshole when it comes to him, O'Brien's final numbers would be a different story. Of course the same could be said for a lot of other QBs, but we're specifically talking about Ken O'Brien. Whether or not those rule changes that would've have definitely affected his numbers would have in turn affected the W/L column, who is to say. because, well, Jets. Therefore, forgone conclusion is PAIN.

    4) And finally, @jets69 , who is the only one who mentioned Pat Ryan. I want to circle back to that because it warrants re-mentioning, albeit in more detail. You can't really have a Ken O'Brien discussion without discussing O'Brien's silent partner, Pat Ryan. Pat Ryan was the best back up QB the Jets have ever had. He fit the role definitively, although Nose Pickin' Joe Walton sometimes couldn't make up his mind. Don't worry, the PAIN TRAIN IS ABOUT TO PULL INTO THE STATION.

    5) Ryan was a low-key, real lunch pail kind of guy. He would sometimes lob a wonderful hospital ball (nerves) before he settled in, but he almost always managed to get it done. "There's light at the end of the tunnel, jeto!" Right, and it's a locomotive. I TOLD you all that the train was about to pull into the station. Patience, please. So anyway, everyone always talks about that brutal double OT playoff loss to Cleveland and the Gastineau RTP call. What everyone forgets is that O'Brien had been benched in favor of Ryan for that game.

    6) Ryan had been playing great ball, and then . . . POW, injured, knocked out of the game, never to return. In goes O'Brien. You can all make every excuse in the world why that game was lost, but I honestly believe that game has a different outcome because Ryan had mojo that day, he was in the zone, and things would've fallen our way, RTP and all. So, and the end of the day, pain on top of the PAIN.

    7) One last thing while we're in The House of Pain. Does anyone remember that show 'Quarterback Challenge'? Well, Ken O'Brien was on it. So was Dan Marino. PAIN. I absolve myself of all responsibility if there are any OD deaths from NSAIDs today. As you were.
     
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  17. LogeSection2RowJ

    LogeSection2RowJ Well-Known Member

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    This was a crap game though. The best thing I can say about this game was that it remains an example of how statistics and records do not tell the story of what happened. The only thing the Jets could do that day was dump the ball off to Clark Gaines, so that's all they did. I was at this game, and what I also remember about it was this was the game Steve DeBerg SF QB had laryngitis, so he wore some sort of thing to amplify his voice. Now I need to look that up - its seems ridiculous even typing those words, but it was something bizarre like that. It was strapped on his back. Goofy.

    The other thing I remember was witnessing one hell of a fistfight outside of Shea after the game near the LF corner.
     
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  18. K'OB

    K'OB 2021 TGG Fantasy Football Champ

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    Who won this wonderful event in its first series?
     
  19. mrjet80

    mrjet80 Well-Known Member

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    I mentioned Ryan getting hurt in that game a few posts back. Had he not been hurt the Browns game would not be remembered today for a Gastineau late hit and a total collapse.........instead we’d all be talking about the next week how the Jets were blown out in Denver and possibly some other stupid play with a catch name that cost them the game lol....
     
  20. mrjet80

    mrjet80 Well-Known Member

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    And I want to say Gaines broke his leg towards the end of that game. If not it was the next game - and he never played for the Jets again.
     

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