Pennington Will Be The Man

If the practice went as well for Chad yesterday (and as poorly for Ramsey) as this article indicates, I think it's fairly clear now that Chad will get the starting job. The Star-Ledger this morning reports how poorly Ramsey faired, citing his "worst practice of camp."

T-Bird and I couldn't figure out why Ramsey had so few snaps Tuesday, but now it looks like they're rotating work days. But even if Ramsey has secretly been eliminated by Mangini as the starter, by having him share reps yesterday, it saves Chad's arm from the heavy load of having been declared the starter and having to therefore take a lot of snaps.

In a side article in the same paper under "Who's Not Hot," it said that "Ramsey had an awful day, overthrowing receivers and not making the correct reads." The interesting thing to watch now will be, how far down the food chain does Ramsey fall? Is Clemens good enough to be the backup? Will we keep Bollinger if Ramsey continues to falter? Could he even slide far enough to be the odd man out? Interesting....

http://www.nj.com/sports/ledger/index.ssf?/base/sports-0/1154584177256260.xml&coll=1

Pennington Sharp Once Again
Thursday, August 03, 2006
BY DAVE HUTCHINSON
Star-Ledger Staff

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. -- Eric Mangini insisted yesterday there still is a battle for the starting quarterback spot on the Jets.

But it would be hard to tell that by the way Chad Pennington and Patrick Ramsey performed during their late afternoon practice.

Continuing a trend that started shortly after camp began, Pennington looked good and Ramsey did not. The two took all the reps during a nearly 2 1/2-hour practice that was moved to the evening because of the heat. The similarity, however, ended there.

Ramsey struggled mightily as the Jets worked on their red-zone and two-minute offense to the sound of blaring music to simulate crowd noise. It may have been his worst practice of camp.

"I'm keeping my head down, staying in the (playbook), just trying to continue to run this (offense) as well as I can," he said.

Pennington, meanwhile, was sharp.

"I do have confidence and my confidence is growing," he said. "I'm proud of the people around me for their help in getting me to where I am and they deserve a lot of credit for helping me get back to being able to compete. That was my whole goal, to be able to come into training camp and compete and give it everything I have."

The Star-Ledger reported in Wednesday's editions that the team had decided Pennington had won the job -- because of practices such as this one.

Mangini denied the decision had been made.

"All I can tell you is I'm the head coach of this football team. The rotation will continue and there's no change in that status," he said.

By not announcing a decision, however, Mangini does gain one advantage: The longer he keeps the rotation going, the longer he can cut down on Pennington's reps, thus saving the training camp wear and tear on his arm.

When Pennington is with the fourth team, he barely gets a rep. As a result, he gets a practice off without the stigma of having to take a practice off to rest.

Mangini said he wasn't ready to change the rotation -- though yesterday marked the first time Kellen Clemens and Brooks Bollinger did not get any reps in team drills.

Pennington, meanwhile, joked around while dodging questions about having won the job.

"The only thing I know that has changed is the practice schedule for today," he said.

 

What's even worse is, on Tuesday, the guy walked around pretty much exuding the body language of a guy who knows he's out. He doesn't have conversation with any of the other QB's and in fact, distances himself (or gets distanced by the coaches) from the rest of the pack. He is rarely seen with the other three as a group... and I am talking about even the stretching, as bizaar as that sounds. When he did get occasional snaps on Tuesday, he wandered around afterwards in an almost dazed-like manner, as if he were talking to himself or overthinking what he could have done better.

I don't think I'm wrong on this... he clearly had the body language of a guy on the bubble, well aware of it, and wondering what the hell to do about it. The look of fear, the look of not knowing if he's even going to be on the roster... that's how bad it comes across.

In the meanwhile, Clemens is out there with absolutely nothing to lose and letting it rip, which has to be pissing Ramsey off no end.

 

That's a good question. I was totally unimpressed with Chad's tosses on Tuesday morning. He was better in the afternoon session, but still threw erratically and even his accuracy wasn't there, probably because he still needs more reps to get the timing down. He does still float a lot of passes, but occasionally some looked to T-Bird and I like the old Penny passes from '02. He never was a Vinnie, let's face it, but he used to have a little something on the ball, at least enough to get by. There were glimpses of that in the evening drills, but still enough WTF passes to disappoint.

Didn't see enough of Ramsey Tuesday to comment one way or the other. But T-Bird and I speculated that he may be having difficulty in the classroom even... and now the Ledger reports he was having difficulty with the reads still, so that could very well be the case. Mangini is not going to give him a #2 position if the guy goes out there and sprays the ball promicuously all over the place as a result of not reading well or not knowing where the WR is heading.

The real recipient of all this is Bollinger, who has to be licking his chops every time Ramsey throws an ugly pass.

 

I think you're right on this, Seafood. Let's face it, even if Chad is only 85-90% at best, do we really have a choice? I was really hoping Ramsey would surface as a legitimate contender for the starting job, but if these reports are at all accurate, Chad gets the job by default. We really don't have a lot of choices on this.

But the interesting thing will be how far Ramsey slides. The more Ramsey sucks the better off the chances that Bollinger remains on the roster with 4 QB's.

 

I've got a real news flash for you, Jonny, and I'm not trying to be negative here. But we're not going to any SB this year anyway.

New coach in his first job as HC... new coaching staff (pretty much)... lots of rookies... no pass rush now that Abraham is gone... a secondary that will take the brunt of that and is perhaps only slightly better than average, so look out because opposing QB's will have all day to find their man... a running game comprised of one hobbled veteran and several decent but inexperienced rookies... a QB for a starter who is one sack away from total disaster... some backups who each have their own negative issues and a rookie that is too young to throw to the wolves.

Think '07 at the earliest.