Enlarge By Jerry Laizure, AP
"What I liked out of Kellen (Clemens) ... is his presence and his ability to run the operation," Jets coach Eric Mangini said. "That's been really positive."
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — There are maybe 4,000 people inside that speck on the map in eastern Oregon. The airport is three hours away. The closest town with an honest-to-goodness shopping center is two hours away. So Christmas shopping has to be a group experience. And, please, no peeking.
"It's a family day," Kellen Clemens said. "Head over and everybody's got their cart. Nobody gets to look in."
The Clemenses are staples of Burns, Ore. Their farm has been in the family for five generations, dating back to 1840. There are around 3,500 acres and 150 head of cow. Kellen has been doing everything there is to do in the family business since he was old enough to help.
"Building fence, feeding cows, moving cows, a lot of riding horses, and then there was the stuff that went along with haying season, where you cut it, rake it, bale it and stack it," he said.
But now the small-town farm boy is coming to the biggest town there is with the hope of hanging his name on the marquee at some point as the quarterback of the Jets.
So there he was Saturday morning at Hofstra, throwing strike after strike with perfect timing on short and intermediate routes. Of course, there was no defense during this drill on the second day of the three-day rookie mini-camp. He was starting to make an impression, though.
"What I liked out of Kellen this weekend is his presence and his ability to run the operation," coach Eric Mangini said. "That's been really positive."
What's he going to do when there are 11 guys breathing fire on the other side? That's the question.
Vince Young, Matt Leinart and Jay Cutler received the hype, but the Jets ran the Clemens option in the second round on April 29.
Some draft analysts, however, were lukewarm on the University of Oregon product.
While he's a solid 223 pounds, Clemens is undersized at only 6-1 5/8. Suspect deep-ball accuracy seemed to come up, suspect athleticism, too. He also broke his left fibula in the eighth game last season, cutting short a strong senior year, and so he couldn't really excel physically during the scouting combine in February.
Clemens, who's fully recovered now and has his decent mobility again, did climb in a lot of minds after some later workouts.
The Jets sent offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer to Oregon last month for a classroom and throwing session, which apparently went well. In the end, they fell in love with his rally-around-me leadership, high completion percentage (64% as a senior in a short-passing spread offense) and terrific touchdown-to-interception ratio (19-4 in 2005), and they felt his arm was better than Young's and Leinart's.
There were also analysts with very high opinions of Clemens.
ESPN's Ron Jaworski, the former Eagles quarterback, has claimed this was the top quarterback in the draft. Then there's Gil Brandt, the former Cowboys director of player personnel and current NFL.com draft analyst.
"The thing about it at the Jets, it's a windy place,"Brandt said in a phone interview. "So you've got to have arm strength and mechanics, and I think he's got both of those. I really liked him as a pick a lot."
Obviously, there are no absolute, money-back guarantees that he will pan out and become the heir to Chad Pennington's job down the road. But Clemens sure has his eye on being "the guy," starting behind center.
Taking offensive players late in rookie drafts often makes plenty of sense, so sometimes it's worth the roll of the dice.But I'd be preety darn sure other, more talented guys aren't there ahead of him.
