Last night’s penultimate Hard Knocks continued the series’ trend of becoming increasingly less fun each week, this time fully corroborating my conviction that, and I am directly quoting myself here, “This preseason has sucked.” With backups eating nearly all 60 minutes of game time tonight in Philadelphia, the Jets hasn’t just run out of chances to convince fans that they’re for real, they’ve run out of chances to convince themselves as well.

What have been the largest criticisms of these Jets this offseason? On the field, they tell us that our quarterback is too green to compete, and that even if he one day evolves into a top rate passer, he is presently capable of washing our entire season down the drain. They tells us that we lack chemistry and maturity, and that by cutting out veteran leaders in favor of mercenaries and bargain bin replacements, we’ve stripped our locker room of its guiding voices. We’ve heard numerous times that we’re either cheap or broke, and that we’ll never be able to pay all our stars, or that next spring is going to turn into a fire sale.

The fourth episode of Hard Knocks didn’t validate any of these beliefs entirely. But it did prove that the team is conscious of these criticisms, and on some level, fears them as well.

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?

Since the day I opened this site, Twitter has always been an important resource. It’s kept me fresh on the latest Jets news, allowed me to connect and communicated with our die-hardiest of fans, and has provided me with an immeasurable number of pointlessly wasted hours of brain rot. In fact, I’ve come to the program I once maligned that I even volunteered to scream into the echo chamber by writing an entire article for Jets Twit about how valuable it is. But never has Twitter proven itself to be as useful as it has this past week during training camp. Whereas once reporters skulked about with tiny flip notebook in hand (and properly credentialed fedora on head), now they carry Blackberries, logging their story 140 characters at a time. The payoff for the fan at home is enormous, as we not only get to learn of each big play as it happens, we get to hear about it 15,000 times over! It’s like being at the practice, minus the optics and scent of fresh air!

Of course, the news that I just linked to was the big story of the day, as Sanchez hit LaDainian on a 30 yard pass for a 70 yard touchdown on the very first play of the Green and White Game scrimmage, to the delight of the 9,500 fans who took the time to put down their Macbooks and show up in person. The play further validates my belief that LT was brought in to be a pass-catching option as much as anything else (between that, the cutting of Faneca and picking up of Santonio Holmes, what offensive move this offseason wasn’t designed to help the pass?). Jane McManus’s tweet implies that it was David Harris who let the TD through, but I know he’s not great in coverage and I trust the defense at large not to give up very many long-distance touchdowns – or touchdowns at all, really – in real games. Obviously, in a scrimmage, every positive play on one side of the ball is a negative one of the converse side, so if our defense had to blow it, I’m glad they did so on a play that should help quiet the mob of LT haters out there. Remember: there’s a reason Revis was asked to cover him at several points in that Chargers game.

After months and months of waiting, we are now knocking on the door of the Twenty Ten season, and folks, we are knocking hard. Jets training camp begins today, and the first practice of the day, one unfortunately closed to the public, is set to begin as I type this. There are a ton of great storylines to follow, and while loads of fun awaits anyone with willing to make the pilgrimage north (especially those who stop by the Mangold Maniacs party tonight at 7:30 PM at the Dark Horse bar), but the rest of us need not be concerned about missing any breaking Jets news: we’ll see it all through the inescapable eye of HBO’s army of cameras. Of course, even Hard Knocks, notable for having the fastest turnaround of any reality show on television, still needs a couple weeks to warm up. So for now I suppose your only training camp options are to grab your kids and jump in your SUV, or go to the team webpage and obsessively hit refresh until August 11th.

Here’s what to watch for at camp between now and when Hard Knocks tells you what to watch for:

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.