Chad Pennington

Young players in Pro football are young men. They often act irrational but most young adults do at some time or another. When you add the element of emotional passion drawn from the spirit of a football game, it gets real interesting, just like it did once to a young QB named Chad Pennington.

I as a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers was caught up in all of the hype of the 200 NFL Draft. My team had a struggling Kordell Stewart and vet Mike Tomczak as the previous season's options at signal caller. It just seemed like a great year to pick up a young promising arm in the draft. One name that was being talked about for the Steelers was Marshall QB Chad Pennington.

When the Steelers turned in their card and ESPN posted their number 8 overall selection of Michigan State’s Plaxico Burress, my hopes were a bit deflated. Not that Burress wasn’t a great specimen as a tall fast wideout that any team could use, but because I thought the Steelers could have used a QB more.

Penniington did go in the first round of that draft too, at number 18 to the New York Jets. He was the only quarterback taken in the first round. I was reminded of this 200 Draft as a Pittsburgh fan during the 2022 NFL Draft when only one college QB was taken in round one. My Steelers chose Kenny Pickett at number 20.

The Jets though had a banner draft, setting an NFL record with four, yes count ‘em four first round selections. Beside Pennington at 18, they received the rights to Shaun Ellis and John Abraham in consecutive 12th and 13th over-all choices and Tight End Anthony Becht with the 27th overall selection. Quite a haul for the New York front office mainly due to the trading of the rights of wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson.

With my heart broken over the Pittsburgh passing of Pennington, I sort of followed the guy's career from afar just to see what he would become as a NFL QB1. He did pretty well 11 years in the League, over 17000 yards, had a winning record, and tossed 102 TDs. Injuries seemed to plague Chad though as he was only available for all regular season games only twice in his career and in 4 other seasons he only dressed for 3 or less games.

Still to this day whenever the name Chad Pennington catches my eye I take a peak at what the news is. Recently his name came up in a book that I was reading over titled Tales From the New York Jets Sideline: A Collection of the Greatest Jets Stories Ever Told, by author Mark Cannizzaro. The link just called out is to Amazon and if you purchase the book using it some of the proceeds will go towards helping the costs of this website.

The tale of Pennington I would like to share with you from the book takes place in the 2001 season, the young QB’s second year in the NFL. Chad Pennington watched from the sidelines and learned the NFL ropes from starting quarterback veteran Vinnie Testeverde. With Testaverde at the helm the Jets won 10 games on the season.

It was nearing the end of the season and the promising Jets with their vet signal caller were on the cusp of the playoff bubble. Two games remained: one at home against the 2-12 hapless Buffalo Bills and a road game against a hungry Oakland Raiders squad that had playoff aspirations themselves sitting at 10-3 inthe standings. New York needed to win just one of these games to lock up a Wild Card birth. A reasonable person would look at this and say, no problem, beat the Bills at home and travel out to California in the final week with no pressure. Well let’s just say that Buffalo had other plans for their Divisional chums…the Bills found that any given Sunday and knocked off the favored Jets in New York 14-9.

As many have said before the Press in the Big Apple is brutal to sports teams and players. After this loss to the Bills, one of the local papers, posted the headline of “Stick a Fork in them!”

It has been noted that everyone has a trigger that will set off their competitive fire. That headline was enough to launch the rockets of ire from within Pennington and it was probably hanging up on a bulletin board somewhere to remind him and to fire him up for the game with the Raiders even though unless injury struck Vinnie, Chad would not see a snap.

The Jets had a pretty good idea that if they could win the game, they might get to travel to the same venue again in Wild Card Weekend to square off with the Raiders again. This regular season finale game with Oakland was tightly fought. Testeverde led New York on a late drive that was capped off by a John Hall 53-yard boot between the uprights to give the Jets a 24-22 come-from-behind-victory.

The youthful and exuberant Pennington filled with victory intoxication exitted the shower and as he walked by the reporter that had written the previous week’s headline, the young QB blared out at full volume, “ Stick a Fork in them! Stick a fork in them! What do you have to say about that now?”

The Jets alas would return to oakland the following week for a rematch but the Raiders under Coach Jon Gruden corrected some things and won the Wild Card game 38-24. The following week they would get defeated by the New England Patriots in the infamous ‘Tuck Rule game.”

Pennington would become the starter of the jets the following year in week five as New York got out to a horrid 1-3 start. He was competitive through the rest of his career as he kept his emotions in check and displayed them in his productivity on the playing field.