MIAMI – The Super Bowl championship he chased so doggedly for eight seasons with the Jets is, against all odds, as always, within his sights, and the obstacle this time for Chad Pennington is Ray Lewis, Ed Reed and that carnivorous Ravens defense.
If there is anything we – you, me and Woody Johnson, Mike Tannenbaum and Eric Mangini – should have learned about Pennington by now it is this:
Never count him out.
The Jets put all their eggs in Brett Favre’s basket and he scrambled them at the end.
The Dolphins put all their eggs in Pennington’s basket and he turned them sunny-side up, and here they are hosting today’s wild-card playoff game.
He is the football Lazarus, the comeback kid, back once from the NFL graveyard and a second time from the NFL scrap heap, two-time winner of the Comeback Player of the Year award.
It means that if he isn’t necessarily a model for Pop Warner quarterbacks everywhere, he is absolutely a model for anyone and everyone anywhere who is told he is too this or too that and can’t do this or can’t do that.
And in Miami, where one of the main approaches to Dolphin Stadium is named Dan Marino Blvd., he is its Cinderella Man, who helped Bill Parcells and Tony Sparano resurrect a woebegotten 1-15 franchise while resurrecting his own career at the same time when everyone figured he would be a hold-the-fort quarterback, at best, until the cavalry arrived.
“That’s what’s unique about it, because as a player and also as a team in a one-year span, we’ve grown so much,” Pennington said this week. “This time last year, I’m getting ready to watch the ball drop in Times Square. No playoffs, no starting job, no anything.”
This time this year, he’s getting ready to win his third playoff game and first since beating the Chargers on the road three long Januarys ago with a torn right rotator cuff that would require not one, but two surgeries. Favre is home in Mississippi, pondering the end to his Hall of Fame career. Again.
No one saw this coming, least of all the Jets. No one saw Pennington showing up at Giants Stadium on the last Sunday of the regular season outplaying Favre and winning the division. Maybe only Pennington saw it. And when it was over, he didn’t gloat, didn’t stick the knife in deeper in the franchise that cast him aside as if he were some chump quarterback instead of the epitome of pride, passion and perseverance.
“I think that the organization didn’t feel like I was the quarterback that could lead them where they wanted to go,” Pennington said on a conference call the day after Favre was holding up his Jets No. 4 jersey between Johnson and Tannenbaum at a hastily-called press conference in Cleveland, where Pennington and Kellen Clemens thought they would be continuing their summer competition.
“I think that is extremely clear or the decision would not have been made. That is part of being in business. Each business, each organization has an opinion and they have to make a decision. That’s why you can’t take that personal and that’s why there are other opportunities around. I am fine with that.”
He had an inner peace, and no regrets, nor should he have had any. But he had yearned to bring a championship to the Jets. He had bled green-and-white for such a long time. So of course a part of him was bleeding inside.
“I think the most difficult part of the last 24 hours is just coming to the realization that you’re no longer wanted by your organization,” Pennington said that day. “You spend eight years with an organization, and in the blink of an eye you’re no longer wanted there. That’s just the crude part of the business that’s sometimes hard to accept emotionally.”
Then he signed with the Dolphins. And look at him now. Look at him now and look at the Dolphins now. And listen to what they say about one of the great leaders, maybe in all of sports.
“When guys see him out there,” cornerback Andre Goodman said this week, “we know we have a chance.”
Ravin’ mad about Chad.