Snap Judgments: Jets' Pennington stands tall in face of Favre rumors

Chad Pennington threw 10 TDs and nine INTs in nine games for the Jets last season. Chuck Solomon/SI Don Banks's Mailbag Submit a comment or question to Don Banks. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND Follow Don Banks on Twitter

EAST HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. -- Musings, observations and the occasional insight as the second week of my NFL training camp tour winds to a close after one-day stops at the Steelers, Browns, Eagles and Jets...

• Conventional wisdom says Chad Pennington is locked into yet another training camp competition for the Jets starting quarterback job, this time with third-year man Kellen Clemens. But that's not the whole story, as the nine-year New York veteran is well aware. Every move he makes these days is with the specter of the Jets' interest in Green Bay legend Brett Favre looming over him.

Don't think for a minute that the Jets aren't keeping their hand in the Favre trade talks, waiting to see if Green Bay grows weary enough of the saga to move him to the AFC team that wears the closest thing to a Packers shade of green. But for now, Pennington plays on, taking the early unspoken lead in camp over the, at times, inaccurate Clemens, and waiting like the rest of us to see what develops on the Favre front.

This isn't his first rodeo, of course. He's a survivor, and reports of Pennington's perennial demise as the Jets starter tend to be greatly exaggerated. When they finally do run No. 10 out of New York, it'll seem like a farewell that was three or four years in the making. With the Jets once again shopping Pennington's job around, I asked him Thursday if he's prone to go home and scream into his pillow these days?

"Oh, yeah,'' he said, minutes after the close of a sweaty two-hour morning practice. "I go home and blow some steam off. I'm getting ready to do it here in a second.''

Pennington was smiling as he said it, but the truth is he's as quietly steamed as the summer weather about the Jets' stealth-like pursuit of Favre. In fairness to the Jets front office's side of the story, New York believes any move that will improve its roster is fair game, and the team has told Pennington that. But that doesn't mean Pennington has to like it. And he doesn't. Although he knows how the game works by now, and won't deem to plead his case in the court of public opinion.

"One thing I've learned after nine years is I have no control what the organization does. None whatsoever,'' Pennington told me. "All I can control is what happens in between these white lines. As a younger player I'd probably have a harder time dealing with it. But now I've seen it, I've been there, lived it, and you know what? I believe in myself. I believe in how I play this game, and that's good enough.''

Pennington is going about his business in Jets camp. So far, just like you knew he would, he has looked like the more efficient, better prepared quarterback in the two-man competition. While Clemens is reported to have thrown six interceptions in team drills, Pennington has yet to have a pass picked off. So what else is new?

When I asked him if it were possible to screen out all the Favre buzz, Pennington was straightforward: "It's possible,'' he said. "Now, is it easy? No, it's not easy. Absolutely not. It can [get to me]. That's why you have to have good people around you. I bounce stuff off my wife, my Dad, and my friends. You just keep a close support group that can help me get through stuff like this, because I don't think you can ever do it on your own.''

Pennington doesn't ride the emotional rollercoaster like he did earlier in his career, and he has almost gotten used to being on New York's endangered species list every year. Almost.

"I think that's part of living in New York, where it's always the next, greatest and latest thing,'' he said. "It has tested me, not only as a football player, but as a man. I think it's made me better.''

Who knows, Favre may still surface in New York at some point soon. But for now, Pennington is still standing. Still the guy the Jets are most likely to turn to when they open the season Week 1 at Miami. Every year it seems to get harder to remember a time when he wasn't.

• Of the nine training camps I've visited so far, at only one have I seen a practice session that involved the offense and defense conducing live, full-pads hitting. And not just on the goal-line drills, but all up and down the field. That would be at Philadelphia's always-physical camp at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa.

In this age of easy-does-it training camps, with their reduced roster sizes and the ramifications that injuries can have for a team's salary cap, Eagles coach Andy Reid is a throwback to an earlier age. When I visited Philly's camp on Wednesday, they were five days into a stretch of 12 consecutive days with two-a-day practices scheduled. In most morning practices, the Eagles wear full pads and go live with their hitting.

"Blocking and tackling are such a big part of the game,'' Reid said. "There isn't a replacement for it. That's the route I go. I'm not saying it's right, but it's something I believe in. If you do it the right way, then you can stay away from the injuries. We try and stay off the knees. We're not cutting anybody. We're not taking guys down low on tackles. We're not chopping them and all that stuff. If you play hard every snap, you should be okay.''

Reid even told me that some of his veterans might not let him change his camp practices to less contact work. "As much as they dread it every day, I'm sure if I came in and said, 'Listen, we're going to take all the hitting off,' '' Reid said. "I have a feeling some of those guys who have been around here for a while may step in and say, 'Hey, coach, we need that. We need to do it.' ''

I don't know about that one, Andy. Let's say I'm dubious if those old-school veterans really exist.