That’s right, I managed to fit in a Beatles and an N’Sync reference into a title about the QB change. I figured since I’m a day late, I had to spruce it up to grab people’s attention. Anywho,  head coach Eric Mangini has named Kellen Clemens the starter for Sunday’s game against Washington (and the foreseeable future).

Well, Jets fans, you get what you’ve been asking for and now Clemens is going to start against an aggressive, hungry defense pissed off after being embarrassed by New England. Obviously, it was time, but this is just the signal of a lost season and it’ll be interesting to see how the veteran players react to Mangini’s concession.

Also, I’m stating this now to preface the start of the Clemens era. If, somehow, someway, the Jets turn around the season under Clemens and win 5 or 6 of their remaining

games, Jets fans are prohibited from saying the following sentence: “If we had started Kellen after the Baltimore game, we’d be in the playoffs!” It just doesn’t work that way. You can’t say how he would have performed in the prior games and circumstance. You’ve been warned, Jets fans. Oh, and also, if you’re gonna boo the kid, then just trade in your tickets for a Knicks game. That’s the only time booing is accepted from start to finish.

The Jonathon Vilma Saga comes to a crushing end, at least in the eyes of those hoping the run defense would pick up. Vilma has been placed on injured reserve and is out for the remainder of the season.

Get those David Harris jerseys ready.

• Bent sends his thoughts from across the pond, but soon enough he’ll be on this side of the Atlantic.
• Is there any wonder why the Dolphins haven’t won a game?
  
• As a Jets season ticket holder, WHY, N.FL., WHY!?!
• Rock highlights the drive that saved Chad’s job.
• Gross has somewhat of a Vilma update.
• Glauber thinks the N.F.L.’s new draft legislation is a good idea.

• Check out Wednesday’s player interviews and Mangini’s press conference.
• Mangini knows that the defense is clearly an issue.
• Here’s a transcript of the Buffalo conference calls.
• TE Sean Ryan is seeing his hard work pay off.
• GM Mike Tannenbaum and the Jets will be honored for their work in the community.

• Pelzman thinks the Jets simply didn’t do enough in the offseason.
• Typical Chad.
• Even TE Chris Baker says it was his back, not his mouth, that kept him out of action.
• The Jets have to be wary of the Bills offense moving the ball at will again.
• Was a vote for Chad, a vote against Kellen? (Thanks to TJB)
  
• Patriots DE Richard Seymour is practicing again.
  

(Note: Belichickian protocol be damned! We will have our injury report! Earlier this offseason, N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell, in an attempt to cuff the duplicitous actions of some of his head coaches (mostly of the Belichick coaching tree), re-worked and re-worded the weekly injury report teams are mandated to release. Instead of seeing probable, questionable, and doubtful on a report, these days teams and fans are privy to four categories: Full participation in practice, limited participation in practice, did not participate in practice and the always-standard out.)

The Week 8 Injury Reports are as follows:

JETS

• Full Participation in Practice
  • WR Justin McCareins (calf),TE Jason Pociask (back), CB Hank Poteat (chest), TE Sean Ryan (knee), S Eric Smith (thigh)
    
    
• Limited Participation in Practice
  • TE Chris Baker (back), WR Laveranues Coles (calf), QB Chad Pennington (ankle), NT Dewayne Robertson (knee)

• Did Not Participate in Practice
  • LB Jonathon Vilma (knee)
• Out
  • None

BILLS

• Full Participation in Practice
  • WR Sam Aiken (hamstring)
    
    
• Limited Participation in Practice
  • TE Ryan Neufeld (quad), CB Ashton Youboty (ankle)
    
    
• Did Not Participate in Practice
  • DE Ryan Denney (foot), LB Leon Joe (knee), DE Chris Kelsay (ankle), S Jim Leonhard (calf), LB Josh Stamer (calf)
    
    
• Out
  • None

The Jonathon Vilma Injury Saga continues. Rich Cimini of the Daily News is reporting that Vilma may be out for the year after suffering a “significant” knee injury. Vilma underwent an MRI Monday afternoon/evening and the results revealed that Vilma’s mysterious knee injury may cost him the rest of his season.

This news comes after Vilma was benched during the 2nd half of Sunday’s loss to Cincinnati. The following day, prior to the MRI, Vilma went on the Joe Beningo and Evan Roberts show on WFAN and said he wasn’t hurt and said his benching was a coach’s decision.

All of this is just really ridiculous. I have no idea what to think about any of this. We’ll have to keep an eye on it.

• Cimini says Mangini needs to make good on his promises of wholesale changes.
• Apparently, Jonathon Vilma wasn’t happy with being taken out of the game. Go figure.
• It may be the green Kool-Aid talking, but it doesn’t sound like the Jets want a day off.
• Free safety Abram Elam’s first start was alright, but it had it’s hiccups.
• Count Cannizzaro as perhaps the only person in New York still on the Chad Pennington bandwagon.
• Hutch’s weekly Jets Insider.
• Jets rookie CB Darrelle Revis is at the center of USA Today’s latest Rookie Focus.

In his press conference this afternoon, Eric Mangini named quarterback Chad Pennington the starter this week against the Bills. Mangini said that he was only focused on this week as far as the quarterback situation goes.

Well, a lot of people aren’t going to be happy about this, but there’s a lot of reasons possibly why he didn’t make the switch.

1. Having already had TE Chris Baker and ILB and defensive captain Jonathon Vilma speak out against him, Mangini fears that benching Chad would lose the locker room completely. After a game in which Chad threw a 50+ yard touchdown pass, 3 total, and overall played his best game of the season, benching Chad would seem like a scapegoat maneuver. It also could be viewed as Mangini wanting to play “his guys” and seeing how a good deal of this team’s current core is built up of “Herm’s Jets”, Mangini is being careful to not poison the locker room.
2. 20/31, 272, 3 TDs, 1 INT. If reports are true, and Mangini gave Chad one last shot to save his job based on the Cincinnati game, then Chad should have done just that.
3. Kellen Clemens isn’t ready. Look, I know there’s a lot of people out there who saw the Baltimore game, specifically the 4th quarter, and immediately thought, “Screw Chad! This kid can win us games NOW!” Well, look at it closer. When Baltimore was putting pressure on, he looked nervous and inconsistent. His passes were overthrown and he was holding on to the ball too long in the pocket. Did he have a very good 4th quarter? Yes, but it was against a team in prevent defense barely rushing more than 4 guys. Do you think teams are going to sit back and let a 2nd year QB pick the team apart? Not a chance. They’re going to analyze that Baltimore film and send the house after him time after time, confusing him and forcing him into bad mistakes. Imagine a young quarterback going through the next 9 games exactly like the first three quarters in Baltimore. It would be a bad situation for both Clemens and the Jets.
4. Because, as much as everyone hates to admit it, Chad Pennington is the best chance for this team to remain competitive–and it has, so far. This team has been in every single game (sans Patriots). As much as we’d like to think we know more than the guys running this team, we don’t. They see Chad and Kellen on the practice field and in the class room, meeting room and film room every day. They obviously think from seeing that work day in and day out that Chad continues to be this team’s best chance to win.

The bottom line is we don’t know more than Eric Mangini. He’s forgotten more about football than most fans, observers and journalists will probably ever know. Whether you like him or not, respect him or not, or understand his decisions, you’ve got to give him the benefit of the doubt. The way I look at it is I would much rather the Jets remain competitive and finish out the season 6-10 or 7-9 (the latter a long shot, I know) than put in a young quarterback who isn’t ready and watch him get beat up every week while finishing with one of the worst records in the league.

Here are the weekly power rankings from around the media.

(The number in parentheses is the Jets previous ranking from a week earlier.)

ESPN: 30 (30)
CBS: 29 (29)
SportingNews: 30 (30)
FoxSports: 29 (29)
Yahoo (Jason Cole): 29 (28)
Yahoo (Charles Robinson: 29 (29)
Bob Glauber: 29 (28)