Tonight Gang Green travels to Charlotte for a slightly less high pressure matchup with the Carolina Panthers. The starters will only get a quarter of play in this one, which is fine, because we already know what they’re capable of. It is the backups who blew it last week, causing Rex to scold them for their lack of intensity and inability to perform like “bad mothas” (yeah, seriously). From top to bottom, on offense, defense and special teams, there are a whole lot of roster spots on the line for the second and third stringers, who have exposed us as one of the league’s shallowest teams.

More than anything, the world’s eyes – and Darrelle Revis’s -will be on the cornerbacks: Antonio Cromartie, Kyle Wilson, Dwight Lowery, Drew Coleman and Marquice Cole. Many are predicting that Revis will return to the Jets, but only after he’s seen enough evidence that the Jets corners can’t perform without him to back the team into a corner. If this is so, then last week’s game surely left him with some ammunition. While Cro and Wilson played decently, 31 did miss two easy picks, the kind that Revis never would. Lowery, Coleman and Cole, meanwhile, were remarkably terrible, and the Jets defense may be in for some serious trouble if it must rely on these names for the entirety of its nickle and dime packages. More play like that and the only thing Revis will be sweating is whether to show up before or after our bye week. You want to redeem yourself, Lowery? Go pick off Clausen two or three times. How difficult could that be, anyway?

Now that the Jets have assembled a team of Marks to compete with Miami’s all-Chad duo (Brunell was clearly preferable over Marc Bulger for spelling purposes), most of us have wondered, if only for a minute or two while in the shower, what Kellen Clemens’ future in the NFL looks like. From what I am reading, a lot of you would like to see the former Oregon Duck remain in New York, due to his knowledge of the playbook, popularity in the clubhouse and serious concerns regarding Brunell’s playing ability. Of course, with five QBs now on the roster, the retention of Clemens, Ainge and O’Connell has become untenable; it is a sure bet that at least one, and likely two of those three will be scrapped. Remarkably, of the trio, it is Clemens who is most likely to be released, even ahead of O’Connell, whose presence on this team has long mystified me. The reason being is of course that it is more economical to carry a scrub like O’Connell in the three or four spot than to plug a backup of fair-to-good quality like Clemens at third string. It is also a sign of respect to Kellen, whom we (the team, anyway…like a lot of fans, I was never sold on him) once considered to be the post-Pennington future, that we allow him to pursue his goal of earning a starting job elsewhere in the league. I may be jumping the gun, but it has been apparent to me for months now that this relationship will end, and end soon. All the better then that Clemens and the Jets part on mutually friendly terms, and that No.11 be granted his right to seek a better life outside the Big Apple.

But if Clemens is a goner, on whose shores can we expect him to wash up? It’s not an easy question to answer, although a general dearth of respectable depth at his position across the league assures us that he will be no more than a single injury away from meaningful time on the field. As for getting a whack or two at the day one starting job, well, the prospects are far thinner, and Clemens doesn’t exactly have a mind-blowing track record when it comes to training camp competitions, having lost three in a row now. He lacks the speed and instinct to play serious pro football – more Byron Leftwich than Kevin Kolb – and there was a time when most Jets fans were legitimately more enthusiastic about Brett Ratliff than this kid. That’s not a good sign. Moreover, if the jury was out on his initial starting effort in 2007, playing behind one of the NFL’s shakiest O-lines, then Clemens erased most doubts of his suckatude against the Buccaneers last December. Despite a massively dominate effort by much of the team, Clemens barely outplayed rookie Josh Freeman, and at times seemed almost completely lost.

But he’s got to get signed somewhere. So which five teams offer the cattle rancher from Burns, Ore. his best chance at redemption? Let’s have a look under the hood.

Nay, friends, I have not fallen into a permanent vegetative state, nor driven my ship off the edge of the earth, to the abyss where the great dragons dwell. It’s actually just kind of been a really busy week for me. As soon as I wrapped up my summer camp work, I was asked to do a near 180 and repack my bags for the Garden State. In the interim, I also happened to come down with bronchitis, or at least that’s what my doctor has told me. I still believe I’ve been stricken with consumption, and they’re going to have to do more than fling a few stethoscopes my way to convince me otherwise. While I was gone, my usually firm handle on the latest Jets news lessened a bit, to the point at which my father, upon picking me up from LaGaurdia, had to break it to me that we had contacted Terrell Owens’ agent. I didn’t believe him. About ten minutes later, he turned on WFAN and Don LaGreca delivered the grim news himself. My assumption at the time was that the team was merely doing their due diligence to investigate a prominent free agent, and that our consideration of him was no more serious than it was concerning JaMarcus Russell. In fact, signing JaMarcus would have made significantly more sense, given that we actually have need for a backup quarterback, whereas I can think of no role for T.O. on this team outside of making people hate us even more and presenting David Clowney with a huge raised middle finger just days after returning from his charity work in Ghana. No matter how serious our interest may have been, Owens indeed wound up in Cincinnati, which was always the only real, logical place for him, and I look forward to watching Cromartie blanket him on Thanksgiving night, while Revis silences his prolifically Twitterish compatriot across the field.

Postponed until the last possible day, the June podcast is at last upon us, and I must say that this is the very best one yet! (Although this isn’t saying much). In today’s edition, our boys discuss the extremely unlikely possibility of the Jets signing JaMarcus Russell, and, in a larger sense, the question of who will be and who should be Mark Sanchez’s backup this season. We also have a look at the newly released Madden 11 player ratings, and have a go at who is overrated, underrated, and, in the sad case of Vernon Gholston, who just plain makes us irate. Finally, we step outside the NFL to explore the LeBron James free agency panic that will consume our sports news for the next couple of weeks. Could he be joining his old buddy Braylon Edwards in the City That Never Sleeps?

All this and more, including an illuminating interview with a three year old girl, on the latest Jets Kvetch Podcast, With Max and Ari in the Morning!

Rex Ryan has been the coach of the New York Jets for little more than a year now, hardly enough time even for the little particles of food in his gravitational pull to complete a full revolution around his waistline, and already an autobiography appears to be in the works. Premature? Perhaps, but when you consider the proximity of the book’s release date to next year’s Super Bowl…well, it’s not necessarily a bad marketing idea. The book, called a “nontraditional” autobiography, as though anything about Rex Ryan is traditional, will be produced via a partnership with former Sports Illustrated editor and current motivational speaker Don Yaeger, who tweeted the news early yesterday afternoon. It is already being called 2011′s biggest beach read, and a spiritual successor to Moby Dick, if only because it too centers around a mad pursuit of glory and a white whale.

Personally, I don’t think it’s too soon for Rex’s book at all. The man is more than a football coach, he’s a sports sensation, and I’d rather read a single chapter about the Ryan family vacation to Disneyland than an entire book of Bill Walsh’s inspirational anecdotes about life and leadership. He’s already due to become a reality TV star next month, when Hard Knocks changes its format to become HBO’s “Rex Ryan Variety Hour,” so conquering the printed word is a logical next step. But where to go from there? If “REX: Story of a Man” is a big enough success, isn’t a film adaptation bound to follow? Couldn’t you just imagine it? After hundreds of bland and hackneyed sports flicks about overcoming adversity and winning as an underdog, we’d at last get a film about kicking people’s faces in and get sloshed afterward.