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?

Are you ready for something vaguely resembling yet not as wholly satisfying or consequential as FOOTBALL!?!!?!?

You better be, because for the Jets, tonight marks the start of the NFL preseason, that wonderful time of the year where Clowneys run wild, fourth stringers shine and the 23,000 fans in attendance pretend to have known Vic Hall’s jersey number all along. It’s a time when you can treat a 17-10 win over the Broncos third team as evidence of an impending championship run, and write off a defeat as a meaningless aberration. Because they are meaningless. This whole thing is meaningless. To call these games exhibition matches isn’t even fair, because there is an assumption there, as in soccer’s “friendlies,” that a real game will be played, and that only the final score will be discounted. Such exhibitions still provide some degree of entertainment value, and may assist the teams involved in their preparations for future competitions. Our preseason, these nationally televised scrimmages, achieve neither function. The coaching staff has already seen enough of these players to have a sense of where they fall on (or off of) the final roster, and even if the opportunity exists for a “Tim Knicky” or a “Martin Teva…am I saying this right? Tevaseu?” to separate themselves from the pack, do we really have to spend $15 on parking and $20 on concessions to watch that? Commissioner Goodell has already made his intentions of shortening the preseason clear, and it’s extremely unlikely that the current four game schedule will survive the new CBA talks. So enjoy this soulless pockmark on the NFL landscape while it still exists, folks. Just remember to take one of those roster pamphlets they hand out at the gate. You’re going to need it.

I don’t know where Schwartz-Feinsod ranks amongst the largest NFL-exclusive sports representation groups. They don’t have the profile of Drew Rosenhaus’s firm, nor the extensive clientele of Eugene Parker, but they are one of the sport’s most successful, and most aggressive, outfits. Their website claims even claims that to date they have negotiated over $900,000,000 for their represented talents, among whom they list such current and former stars as Roddy White, Terrell Davis and Ike Hillard. Of course, there are four other players for whom they have gone to bat, whose names may be of more interest to Jets fans: Marques Douglas, Chris Baker, Vincent Jackson and…Pete Kendall. Yes, that’s right. I can feel your palms beginning to sweat from here. Kendall, as you may recall, was at the center of the Jets’ last major non-Revis training camp dispute, one so full of spit and bile that Mike Tannenbaum would practically have to take a dump on Darrelle Revis’s rose garden to top it.

The long and short of it, for those who can’t think back to 2007 all that clearly: the Jets and Schwartz-Feinsod agreed to restructure the veteran guard’s contract in 2006, with an assumption, on Kendall’s side at least, that he would receive it back in spades the following year. When the Jets refused to up his salary the next year, Kendall and his agent unleashed fiery hell on Tannenbaum and Mangini, then the bi-headed beast known as Tangini. The result was an acrimonious two-way media takedown operation that left Mangini so enraged that he demoted Kendall to second string and the rookie dorm rooms at Hofstra…where a young first round pick named Darrelle Revis would have been staying, had he not been busy holding out for 20 days.

There’s been a lot of news at Jets camp so far, and most of it good. Sanchez’s jubilant TD connection with Santonio Holmes, who had had only just reported to camp after spending several days in the hospital with his Sickle Cell stricken son, was one of those moments that made you smile, even if you only read about it on Twitter. John Conner has been making quite a name for himself, which is not such an easy thing to do when you are primarily known for sharing a name with someone else. During today’s morning practices, Braylon completed the kind of uber-athletic catch that makes you wonder why he struggles so much when the ball falls right to him. But no one has shined more these last four days than the San Diego cast-off, who, if only in small part, has begun to dispel every doubt Jets fans may have had about him.

On Day Three alone he intercepted Sanchez twice, deflected a pass in the end zone and completely crushed LaDainian Tomlinson, perhaps operating on a desire long repressed with the protective Chargers. Fans were right to question Cromartie’s tackling ability, instrumental in opening the door to the conference championship for our team, and it is true that he still has much to prove before trepidation can subside fully into good will, but, damn, does this not sound like a starting corner to you? As the popular thinking goes, Cro, now removed from the inhibitive zone-centric D of Norv Turner’s Chargers, can once again return to 2007 form, when earned himself a fine Xbox achievement for picking off Peyton Manning thrice in a single half.

Unfortunately, this is idea is not exactly on the money, for it assumes that Cromartie will be playing the same role for us that he did for the ’07 Chargers.

Joe McKnight is really starting to piss me off. I mean, it’s not anything personal, at least it’s not related to his personality. But I can’t help but think his inability to get in football shape relates to some innate flaw in his work ethic. I was willing to write it off when the kid ralphed all over the grass at minicamp, but the latest news that he has been added to the non-football injury list and will miss the start of camp due to his failing the (very basic) conditioning test really sets me off. I’m sure those tests are no easy going for mortal men such as you and I, but a fourth round draft pick ought not to have any trouble running “a 300 yard shuttle from the goal line to the 25 yard line and back” as Jeff Fisher explained part of the process. I used to have to run suicides up and down a steep hill for cross country track. If I, in my infinite pudginess, can do that, you can handle a few weights and a time trial, Joe. Earlier today Braylon tweeted his displeasure that the results of these conditioning tests are seen increasingly to be newsworthy, but, hey, when a player misses time because he couldn’t hack it, that ought to make the cut above the fold. This is just like those physicals they run after trades; they’re total formalities until someone screws up. So far, and I might be being reactionary here, Joe McKnight has all the trappings of a complete bust, and that means bad news for Shonn Greene, upon whom I believe we have placed far too much pressure. The future of the Ground and Pound strategy seems more and more in doubt as the season approaches.