When didn't he do it in 2007? Pennington was always better than Clemens and still is. When the season got out of hand he put Clemens in to get him some experience.
I'm not sure what happened in camp, but in the preseason games KC was outplaying Pennington. Pennington got the nod as the starting QB anyway. Given our O-line situation last year, I don't blame Mangini for keeping Chad #1 to start the season. Wonder what would have happened if Chad hadn't gotten injured?
I meant everyone else. I wanted Chad to start too. I felt as if Pouha was doing a better job than DRob. Sione should have been playing a lot more. Its not always the QB.
It's pretty clear to me that Clemens will never be starting Qb material. If Favre were to go down I would rather see Ratliff in there. He will make a lot of mistakes while he adjusts to the "speed of the game" and talent he will face in first string defenses but he also has the moxie to make some big plays while he learns. My main issue with Clemens last year was not the mistakes but the fact that he didn't make many plays to go along with the mistakes. And by no means do I think Ratliff is a sure thing for the Qb of the future because he had a nice preseason against second stringers but at least he has potential where Clemens has gotten a chance and has been bad. I know the argument will be Clemens had a bad line but that was what they said about David Carr forever and now he's on his third team and it's clear he will never be good enough to be a starter in this league. Most Qb's you can tell in a short body of work if they will be any good. Mistakes are normal for a young QB but they should mix in good play as well. Clemens is in his thrid year now and he can't get the team in the end zone against 2nd and 3rd stringers. I could very well be wrong about him because there are some QB's who come into their own later in their career (Drew Brees, Eli Manning) but that is a rare thing. More often than not teams stick with guys like David Carr, Byron Leftwich, Rex Grossman, Kyle Boller, JP Losman, Joey Harrington (I could go on forever) too long and I am not willing to give clemens this team now or next year or two years from now and go through another 4 win season and then realize we have to start from scratch.
On Carr: Cause and effect. You can't just say "Carr sucked, ignore the O-line cause that probably had nothing to do with it." People LOVED Carr out of college, and you dont' just *become* the number pick by sucking. Theres a reason so many teams have given Carr so many chances after the Texans too...he's a good, smart, talented guy. Is his career fucked because of getting murdered behind that O-line? Sure. But to point him out like he's a legit argument is ridiculous...dude was thrown behind a fucking expansion teams OL that had just lost its best player...and was sacked SEVENTY SIX times as a rookie...and in the time he was QB the Texans added Andre Johnson to the offense...Lol...Johnson as we all know is not a LT...or a RT...or a G...or a C...or even a backup at one of those positions... And no...no you can't tell how good a QB is based on a short body of work. You can't tell how good ANYONE is based on a short body of work. WTF even qualifies as a short body of work? Does 8 starts behind a shitty O-line with injured WRs and no running game REALLY mean that much to you guys? Now I could see arguing that Clemens probably won't work because young QBs who get *that* beat up early in their careers usually do lose all/most of their confidence. But how the fuck do you know he can't start? You haven't even seen him start an NFL game this season and he's got 8 whole starts to judge him off of...I realize we all want to think of ourselves of NFL scouts and experts...but basically *nothing* you said was true there. Even using common sense WTF is the point of just throwing away a 25 year old QB you just used a second round pick on 3 years ago?
Robinson was named the starter in 79 before the season and that would have finished Todd except that Robinson injured his thumb before the first regular season game in a thumb wrestling incident. He hid the injury from Michaels and Michaels was so pissed at him it did him in. Todd likely would have been unloaded not Robinson if it wasn't for that injury. You're right about the year I mixed it up but Todd was done not because of the collar bone but because he lost the starting job in TC and pre-season the year after the collar bone injury. Robinson ended up doing himself in other wise Todd not Robinson would have been traded.
I think it would have depended on how Robinson played throughout the season. Hard to say how he would have done, we only have 1978 to base it on. When he went to Denver he never really got back to how well he played with the Jets. Todd's collarbone was Week 4 or 5 of the 1978 season vs Washington, he missed 8 weeks where Robinson played well, then came back as the starter for the New England game and reinjured it, Robinson taking over for the year. That set the stage for the pre-season battle in 1979 which Robinson won. I never did get the story behind the injury.
The story that the paper reported was he sprained his thumb horsing around thumb wrestling. He tried to hide the injury from Michaels who was a fairly intimidating guy. Michaels apparently went bat shit after reading about it in the press or being asked about it by a reporter? Not sure which. I really believe that did Robinson in with the Jets more than the injury itself. I always like Michaels but he was from a different era probably pre-Neanderthal.
True. On America's Game they discussed how Michaels confronted Namath on the team plane in Namath's early days with the team. The stories I've heard about him would suggest that he was a madman.
You can flip that argument and say Clemens should have looked better against 2nd stringers than Ratliff did. Ratliff looked better than Clemens has ever had as a Jets. Clemens has been passed up and clearly Ratliff looked better heck even Ainge looked better. Thats why we have 4 QB because of Clemens bad play.
That's a pretty bold statement. Clemens looked great last preseason.. and if you look at his stats, they were nearly identical to Ratliff's in almost every category. I wouldn't go as far as to say Ainge looked better than Clemens either.
You can't say his OL had nothing to do with it, but you could very easily say he would have sucked anyway. Behind a superior offensive line (Carolina's, last year), it became clear that he's indecisive, unwilling to take risks downfield, and, most importantly, holds the ball way too long--which no doubt contributed to him getting killed in Houston. That said, I don't think we should trade away one of only 2 QBs on our roster with actual NFL experience. Cosign x10,000. Kellen Clemens Preseason Stats, 2007: 30-41 (73.2%), 364 yards, 4 TD, 2 INT, 112.2 rating Brett Ratliff Preseason Stats, 2008: 32-47 (68.1%) 499 yards, 4 TD, 1 INT, 122.6 rating Everyone needs to chill out.
Stats never tell the whole story. Ratliff showed some things that we've yet to see from Clemens in terms of poise and moxie. I don't want to get rid of Clemens either, but just comparing the stats doesn't do justice to what we've seen from Ratliff this season.
You don't think years of getting clobbered in Texas made Carr develop some bad habits? Throw that in with #1 pick scrutiny, being the face of an expansion team, and a coaching staff that completely ignored the O-line even after Boselli went down and the guy had no real shot. So no, I won't assume Carr would have sucked. You don't get to be the #1 pick by sucking. Personally, you underrate how much the play of a young, inexperienced QB depends on his team. Every single young QB that's succeeded in the league in the past few years has succeeded because the offense was built to ease them into it. Roethlisberger...Hasselback...Rogers right now...Palmer...Cutler...the list could go on throughout history...a QB is the biggest piece but the thing is you need to at least have some consistency with the other pieces for the QB to do his thing. The Texans gave Carr no chance to succeed as a rookie, and barely did anything the rest of his tenure there.
Think about it this way...it tells you how much preseason means... As high as I am now. :drumthing: It'd be cool and very nice to see. But he's not. So I won't treat it like that.
