NY Jets #11 - Part 3

We are in the process of updating all previously discussed numbers up to 61, wherever necessary. We are also revising some of the previous entries themselves, making them, we hope, more palatable. More readable. Less unreadable.

Drafted in the second round in 2006, Kellen Clemens #11 was supposed to be the man-in-waiting for the end of Chad Pennington's career. Is there any more hopeful gesture in the football universe than the drafting of a quarterback? I don't mean drafting someone like Andrew Luck, Matt Leinart or Mark Sanchez, in the first round. I mean drafting someone like Kellen Clemens in the second, a thrown hope in a field of hopefuls from many positions. Sitting there, seemingly innocuous, he may well be the future of the franchise, for all you know. Ah, but then let's not go there just yet. Not just yet. Ah, but maybe. Maybe.

You look for pictures of him online. You find this picture at the right. You imagine him in a Jets uniform, coming off the bench when Chad Pennington will eventually wither or be injured, and suddenly you witness the seas parting and the staff turned to a snake. A drafted quarterback represents the richest hope that a football fan could wish for because this is a game made and determined by the success of its signal caller, whether he can make good decisions on his own or follows the bidding of his coach through a microphone in his helmet. We are, as a nation, by our very nature, drawn to principles of self-reliance and individuality. We don't like people telling us what to do. But there is in the quarterback the embodiment of another American archetype, the single general in charge of everything, upon whom all things rely. The One. Every drafted quarterback is potentially The One who will make us all #1.

But not most quarterbacks, and not Kellen Clemens. Today he is technically a backup in St. Louis. His #11 was taken from him and reduced by ten to #1, a jersey number which is often ironic in this game because it is the number everyone wants to be, but not to wear. You cannot name anybody successful in football who wore #1. You barely find a kicker who wears it well.

Another #11 drafted backup is J.J. Jones. He was the first African-American quarterback for the New York Jets. A rookie from Fisk University, Jones was the sole backup to Namath, and like the others before him in the 70's - Demory, Woodall, Davis - Jones' primary goal was to hand the ball off to John Riggins (though the others handed off to Boozer, too). As depicted in the card to the left, he was obviously put into Ken Shipp's first game as coach that year, a 37-6 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals, probably in the fourth quarter, after one of Namath's passes was returned for an interception. He started against the San Diego Chargers in week 13, after Namath apparently missed curfew during the week. It was a gesture, merely. Jones threw about six passes total, and then Namath went into the game at the start of the second quarter. The Jets lost to a poor San Diego team, 24-16. It was his first and last starting job as a pro.

No sooner did that moment pass into oblivion (or my memory) than - according to the alumni newsletter from Fisk University - J.J. was named a Presidential Appointee by President Gerald R. Ford to the U.S. Department of Commerce's Office of Minority Business Enterprise. He was also a co-founder of Pacific Northwest Chapter National Black Chamber of Commerce in Seattle in 1996. He became a fairly respected member of the community, and that's why his death in 2009 was newsworthy. He died in a house fire, apparently, the work of an arsonist, very likely his nephew, a mentally ill man who had been living with Jones and his partner.

At JetNation, the news of his death was joined with an update that Jones himself gave back in March 2008 in reply to the question, "What happened to JJ Jones?" In reply to JetNation's all-points request, Jones made a provocative comment about Lou Holtz that's worth reading. He made an excellent point about himself as a pioneer, for he was. Seeing an African-American at quarterback position was a sight to which the eyes of the nation needed to adjust in the 1970's, and whether at backup, or starting, as James Harris did in Los Angeles, or starting for the injured Terry Bradshaw, as Joe Gilliam did, the black quarterback was seen as an anomaly. To my mind, this has only recently changed.

Warren Moon is a Hall of Famer who, as Jones points out, credited "James Harris and a couple of others" in his induction speech. Moon won the Rose Bowl for the University of Washington two years after Jones retired. "I met Warren Moon when he visited Mount Zion my church home in Seattle," Jones writes, "and I told him I was one of those 'couple of others!" Most of us are backups like Clemens and Jones, and perhaps that's all we will be. But all of us, whether we realize it or not, are one of a couple of others to someone somewhere, offering a place for someone else to fill, even when the person who benefits from it never knows who we are.

NY Jets #11 (Updated)

The years with which I have least connection as a Jets fan would have to be the years I was at college in New England. I just lost my way a little. One of those college years was also spent in England. The old one. And Tony Eason? Yeah #11 Tony Eason quarterbacked for the Jets as a backup from 1989 to 1990, my last two years at school. Put him up there with Frank Reich, Bubby Brister, Jack Trudeau, Boomer Esiason, Jay Fielder. Quarterback castaways. This is where the road mostly ends, fellas. Cast off your burden here, ye mighties but look upon this sight and despair. He played two seasons with the Jets in the Coslet years. And I cannot recall a single thing about his play with us. Sometimes it just works that way. I was at college, drinking very heavily, and working on deadlines. I had priorities, such as they were.

No. 11 Brian Hansen came to the Jets in 1994 when Louis Aguiar's directional punting didn't work out. He played five seasons with us, though when I look him up on the Jets' all-time roster, I see that his information is exactly the same as Don Silvestri's. So Brian Hansen enabled me to locate some errors on he New York Jets website. How about that. Yeah. (Time elapses) It's kind of hard to say interesting things about a punter. It's not Brian Hansen's fault.

The Jets had their share of guys who backed up Joe Namath in the 1970's, but the last to do it before Richard Todd was given the full-time job was Steve Joachim, #11 in that magic year of 1976. College coach that he was by nature, Lou Holtz must have noticed that Joachim won the Maxwell Award for excellence in college football after playing for Temple University. In 1974. Originally drafted in 1975 by - say it together - the Baltimore Colts, Joachim's statistics indicate "1G," one game, while his career indicates one team: the New York Jets. We do not know if he even so much as threw the ball.

Is this Patrick Ramsey's
only pass for the Jets?

In the continuing story of the weird rivalry between the Redskins and the Jets, #11 Patrick Ramsey traveled the other end of the pipeline to the Meadowlands. It always boggled my mind how intent Steve Spurrier was in keeping Patrick Ramsey at quarterback in DC. According to several records I checked, Patrick Ramsey has also the extraordinary distinction of having thrown one pass for the Jets all through the 2006 regular season. It is possible that depicted to the right is that selfsame pass. He was shipped to Denver where he played behind the guy who backed up Jay Cutler. How do you go through a whole season and get to throw one pass for a team? How do you not lose your mind?

Ed "Butch" Songin was a New York Titans #11 who apparently quarterbacked behind Al Dorow in 1962 after quarterbacking for the Boston Patriots the years before. We have no photographs, no stories, no images, no half-true anecdotes. To have been an unknown player on a team that was practically a rumor on even the AFL scene is a difficult burden to carry. The only thing I do know is that he passed out of this world on May 25, 1976, a relatively young man, no doubt. The cause of death remains unknown. RIP Butch.

Jim Turner has the unique distinction of being one of five New York Jets to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated. He is also a placekicker who's nickname is "Tank," a distinction normally reserved for nose tackles. The Football Issue of September 1969 (left) shows Jim putting the boot to it. He is the last of the straight-on kickers, for both the Jets and the NFL as a whole. He scored nine points of the Jets' 16 in Super Bowl III. If you own the NFL Greatest Games replay of the game, there is a great moment caught on the sideline where a clearly agitated Joe Namath is unhappy about not getting the ball closer for Jim Turner to kick a field goal. Placed in the strange position of reassuring his somewhat high maintenance field general, Tank just keeps saying over and over, "It's OK, Joe. It's OK. Don't worry about it. It's OK."

Troy Woodbury

Tory Woodbury? Anybody? Tory Woodbury? A running back and a backup quarterback in 2001? C'mon. Somebody's got to have something somewhere on this guy. This is crazy. I found more stuff on Butch Songin. What is this, exactly?

That was three years ago. If you go to JetsTwit, you'll get the answers that can only come when a writer takes a blog to the next level - analyzing Twitter content on the Jets in the blogosphere. Wish I had thought of that. Take a look at about 2:27 in the video at the bottom of the link, and you'll see Woodbury's first NFL catch, playing as one of several receivers filling in for injured Wayne Chrebet in a loss to Jacksonville in 2002. He promptly takes the ball to the sidelines at the end of the play.