IRVING, Texas – The Jets, like all of the unfortunate turkeys who provided dinner for millions yesterday, could not hide on this Thanksgiving Day.
On the short side of a 34-3 rout, the Jets were badly exposed on national television at Texas Stadium by the Cowboys, who put so many more impact playmakers on the field compared to the Jets it makes the Jets look like a second-division team.
That damning declaration starts at the quarterback position, where Tony Romo, the Cowboys’ smiling assassin, has risen from obscurity to become a legitimate star – one who seemingly has the Dallas quarterback position solidified for a long time.
The Jets, whose most significant task remaining in this lost season is to find out about Kellen Clemens, are staring at a very incomplete painting right now, and it has to be very unsettling.
Clemens has, quite simply, been underwhelming since he was handed Chad Pennington’s keys to the offense. Yesterday, he was at his worst since taking over as the starter, completing 12-of-27 passes for 142 yards and an interception.
Clemens, 1-3 in his four NFL starts, is completing fewer than 50 percent of his passes. He’s thrown three touchdown passes and has six interceptions in the four starts. More importantly, he’s led the offense to only two touchdowns in the last three games.
To borrow from one of Bill Parcells’ many truisms, a quarterback is judged by how often he gets his team into the end zone.
As much as Pennington struggled before being benched, Clemens, quite frankly, has looked worse. This is not meant as a gratuitous shot at Clemens, who’s learning under fire on the fly. He hasn’t gotten a lot of help around him and needs more chances to prove himself. But he hasn’t exactly elevated those around him, something good quarterbacks do.
This, too, is not a criticism of Eric Mangini’s decision to insert Clemens into the starting lineup when he did, because at 1-7 there was nothing left to accomplish this season but to find out if Clemens is NFL starting quarterback timber.
The problem, though the three games Clemens has started since taking over for Pennington, it hasn’t looked very good, and the early signs are ominous. What we have found out about Clemens is he’s a mature, poised, level-headed, tough player. And that’s all great. But we don’t know if he’ll ever be Romo or even merely a winning starting quarterback in this league.
And if Mangini and GM Mike Tannenbaum don’t see more evidence in the next five weeks that Clemens is their quarterback of now and the future, they might have to go draft someone in April with the high draft pick they’ll have.
That, of course, would be a damning admission of failure considering that Clemens was a second-round pick a year ago.
Ben Graham’s punt with 10:47 remaining in the game was his eighth of the game, two more punts than the Jets had first downs at that moment. Supplanting the “Texas two-step” dance with their own version – the three-and-out – the Jets wouldn’t record a first down in the second half until some three minutes remained in the game.
That’s on the entire offense. The line was manhandled by the Dallas front seven, unable to break open holes for Thomas Jones to run through and unable to protect Clemens long enough to for him to make some plays down the field.
But this offensive ineptitude must rest most heavily on Clemens, who overthrew some receivers and threw behind some others. On the out pattern pass he threw to Jerricho Cotchery in the second quarter, the one Dallas cornerback Terence Newman picked off and returned 50 yards for a touchdown and a 21-0 lead, Clemens stared at Cotchery so long you wondered if he was going to ask him out to the prom.
“Overall, I certainly did not play good enough to put our team in position to win the game,” Clemens said. “It’s frustrating. It’s absolutely frustrating.”