That was a freak injury, he fell on his hand--non-throwing hand at that but still missed time. It happens. Chad created his own problems, did the rotator cuff diving forward after he easily had picked up a first down at Buffalo instead of sliding. I was thinking of that when I saw Sanchez diving throwing shoulder first to make a block on the Stuckey reverse last night.
I think this is on target. Clemens is exactly that = barely serviceable. He does not look like M. Bulger, for example, who if I recall correctly was in the Rams system for a couple of years, then got his chance in 2002 and looked ready to start. Clemens does not look ready to start.
Yeah, that was the thing that infuriated me after time with Chad. He piled on freak injury after freak injury until I couldn't argue against the idea that he was injury prone. I mean, that injury against Buffalo, he wasn't even touched.
The Buffalo one is what led to the next one and all the problems. I guess anyone could fall wrong but you'd think a QB would know how to get down without that happening. I remember Curtis Martin once saying the key to durability was being able to get your body right to fall correctly, of course very few were as good at it as he was but still there has to be a medium there.
The unnamed Jet in 2005 had it right: Chad was like an egg back there. Whatever injury prone consists of he had. I remember the game in 2005 against the Jaguars where the Jets just looked slow and small compared to the opposition. Chad was in mercy mode from the first quarter on just trying to survive a hellacious pass rush and the Jets kept getting stacked up with 3rd and 6+ and then the Jaguars would turn up the rush and Chad would be flushed out and run down again. The play he hurt himself on was the scramble up the middle through a very small crack that opened up when the Jets were like on their own 8 in third and long again. He squeezed through and the look on his face as he hit the ground told it all: another injury, which was his third season in a row. I remember thinking that I had never seen anybody get hurt like that before. Nobody in their right minds goes right up the gut standing straight up in QB pads but that's what he did and that's where he got hurt. He played another couple of series but the shoulder was definitely separated on that play.
Brandon Short blitzed the middle of the Jets OL (subs OL in the game) and was completely untouched he got into the backfield and he grabbed Chad who was rolling to his right got hit and fell on his hand awkwardly.
He played the rest of that game, it happened right in front of me, I sit in 128 20 rows up. Actually he threw the game-winning TD right into Wayne Chrebet's hands at the end of it and Chrebet dropped it.
No he definitely came out for Fiedler a couple of series later. I remember wondering what the heck happened, whether I had imagined the injury or not, and then they took him out and he never came back in that season. Oops, just double-checked and you're right: he came back in injured after Fiedler got hurt on his first series. He was still hurt on the play early on. That's when it happened. He got pulled after he took some more sacks and then had to come back after Fiedler got hurt. He didn't take another snap in a game after that one. The Jets signed Vinny.
Was it Machado that missed the block? I know Fabini was still in the game and I could have sworn Short came around the outside.
I thought it was Brandon Moore, who was being converted from DE to G that camp, but it might have been Machado. I remember thinking when it happened that this was why you never let your starting QB on the field with backups in the preseason. The Jets had another scrub guard they were trying out that year also, can't recall who it was but he didn't make the team. They wound up playing Brent Smith at RG for a lot of that season. It definitely was not him.
You're right, Chad did come out, leading Fiedler to getting hurt in the same game with I think the same injury. Fiedler never played again, did he?
Yeah that was the straw that broke the camel's back for Bradway as GM: signing an injury prone backup QB for an injury prone QB. That they both went out in the same game was just divine providence for us. Of course Bradway has hung around anyway like a bad smell you can't get out of your car.
The thing about that move was that Fiedler was at least as injury prone as Chad before he came to the Jets. One would think you would want at least to have a durable backup. Bad move, Badway.
What sucks is that no one has separated themselves and we're running dangerously short on time to decide who the guy is. Whoever is going to be the starter week one needs as many 1st team snaps as possible. Rex may be forced to flip a coin by Friday.
Fiedler had a good pre-season, too, because Chad wasn't all the way healthy and probably shouldn't have been playing. Playing in the playoffs was one thing, I can understand that, but he shouldn't have been back at all until he was healthy. Love the new avatar, BTW.
They had to keep Clemens interested. Seriously, do you think for a second that Johnson, Tannenbaum and Ryan haven't ordained this outcome long ago?
You don't put the success of the team at risk in order to keep someone who you've predetermined to be the backup interested. That's retarded.
He certainly has to be ready if there is an injury so of course he would get his share of reps in camp. Just like every other backup does in every other camp. That isn't the point. I've said it before, if there was a serious competition here then Clemens would have been signed to at least a 1 year extension. He wasn't and there isn't.
