Every time Clemens plays, he makes plays that guys who have been going to NFL practices for three years should not make. Inexplicable throws, losing the ball when the guy is coming from the front side. Around those plays though, he plays pretty good. He's a weird case, because the bad plays should keep him as a backup, but what if one day he learns to avoid the bad ones? He's pretty accurate and has a pretty strong arm.
That's the problem Rex has on his hands. And it's a doozy. Sanchez probably makes the Jets a little better right now. Probably. A little. But having to bench him is an unacceptable scenario. So while it sounds like micro-managing or pussy-footing, I still think KC should start the season, even knowing that it slightly hurts our chances of winning now. The downside is more palatable, and we aren't a championship contender.
I was happy to see the bad passes from Sanchez. You can only learn from making mistakes in football, practice and coaching and playbooks will never amount to the education a QB gets from throwing a bad pass in a game. Its great that it doesn't count for a few more weeks, let him make as many bad throws and mistakes as possible right now. Sanchez is ready. If the standard for a QB to meet is to not throw a bad pass or he isn't ready, I can't think of any perfect passers, so its going to happen. But the reason I say he is ready is because he played better once he had gotten knocked upside the head a few times. You can't coach handling pressure and facing fear, that is something you do on instinct, and his instinct was to face fear head on and not only not shy away or lose his cool; he actually improved under the pressure. Once he showed he could do that, I was totally convinced.
As Jaworski and Gruden pointed out last night, he only played 16 games in college, too, so he has a huge learning curve. Considering we open on the road and the home opener is New England, I wouldn't be upset if he didn't play those games, but it will be interesting to see what Ryan does. We're going to learn a good bit about Ryan through all of this, too. Also interesting is to see what he does with the last pre-season game, when Andy Reid typically doesn't play anyone. We have guys all over the field who need as much practice and as many reps as possible. I don't think I can remember a pre-season with quite as much to look for as this one.
Yeah, I feel the same way about this preseason. Plus, we have a HC that isn't completely petrified of trying real-world schemes during preseason to see if they work against other teams, so we actually have something to watch.
It makes perfect sense to practice on the field what you're going to try to do during the season. That's what the pre-season was supposed to be for. For some reason coaches have out-smarted themselves, made everything vanilla and won't play their guys even if they need work. Favre, for example, came in late last year, played a few series and then skipped the Philly game. Why even have the game?
It's the injury factor. That completely trumps the real game experience factor in the salary cap/free agency era. Everybody is terrified of losing a key player to injury during the preseason - as they should be - and so preseason contests turn into revenue generating events in which usually the pace of play is about the same as you see at the pro bowl: very basic and starters playing at three quarters speed and then the game going to full speed when the scrubs come in. Really they wouldn't even be playing preseason games any more if the revenue was not a factor. When the NFL goes to 18 games in a year or two they'll cut two more preseason games and when they go to 20 they'll cut the entire preseason. I wish the Jets didn't play preseason games at all. I've seen entire seasons wiped out by preseason injuries.
The injury factor is farily obvious, and in cases where you have your team together and set I can see sitting guys out. In our case, as in the case with Favre last year, you have limited time and opportunity to get people ready for week one, it doesn't make sense to pass on a chance to get guys in real game situations. I could even see Favre last year because he was in the league for 18 years, but we have QBs, WRs and guys on D who desperately need time on the field together to get ready for the first game.
With no preseason everybody would be in the same boat. What the players learn from each other in preseason is minimal compared to what they learn from each other under fire in a real game. The preseason is a revenue raising mirage.
The thing I always notice about Clemens when he plays is that he doesn't seem to have that "sixth sense" feeling a defender closing fast from the side or behind. I don't think after 4 years he's going to suddenly develop that ability. So that's a big problem with him. He did get the ball away once last night in the nick of time, but that was against backups who are probably a step slower.
I'm not disagreeing with that, but the reality right now is it's there and it's better than just having practice. So if guys need reps, they might as well use what they have, bullshit as it is it's better than sitting out. You can get hurt in practice, too, can't worry about that.
injuries are part of football. if you walk around being terriffied of injuries guess what? you wind up getting injured.
Yeah, I kept telling myself that when Chad went down in that Giants preseason game in 2003. It didn't work.
But that's the point. Chad only played whatever the standard prescription was for these games and he still got hurt. Happened to Chrebet the year Vinny went down in Week 1 but nobody remembers it because of what happened to Vinny. Marvin Jones went out for the season in shorts in July one year. So either don't play at all or go out there and get ready for the season, one or the other.
Right, well in that case we had a moron for a head coach who put the starting QB out there with a patchwork quilt for an offensive line and then decided to roll chad out. chad is one of the slowest human beings in the NFL and not surprisingly the patchwork quilt failed to protect him, he was easily caught from behind and he got hurt. Thats football.
It was 2003. We had far better than a patchwork quilt blocking for Chad. Fabini just missed a block on Chad's blindside. Freak occurrence, but it happens and 'injuries happen' is no comfort when it's in a meaningless game.
