FanHouse KellenClemens

With Fantasy Football season ready to kick in high gear, FanHouse is here to preview each and every team -- one per day until we've done them all.

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Offense in transition. With a new head coach along with rookies at quarterback and time-sharing running back, the best work of the Jets' offense will be in 2010 and beyond. They'll look to win with defense and taking care of the football in 2009, and you know that doesn't bode well when it comes to garnering massive amounts of fantasy points.

There are finds to be had on any team, but no Jets should be taken in the first three rounds of your draft -- and that's being conservative.

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FLORHAM PARK, N.J. -- There are so many things a rookie quarterback -- even one as hyped as Mark Sanchez -- can do better. He can be more accurate, less nervous, a quicker learner...any number of things.

Sanchez's coach wants him to be louder.

Jets coach Rex Ryan said Tuesday that one of the things Sanchez needs to work on in his preseason competition with Kellen Clemens for the team's starting quarterback job is his voice -- specifically the way in which he uses it to try and draw defenses offsides. Sanchez said today he was getting the message, and getting better.

A year ago, Eric Mangini, still the Jets head coach, was contemplating making a quarterback change. Chad Pennington and Kellen Clemens were scheduled to fight for the job, and Mangini, uninspired by his options, eventually traded for Brett Favre and released Pennington.

After an 8-3 start, the Jets, largely due to Favre's inconsistent play, finished 1-4 and missed the playoffs. Pennington signed with the Dolphins and promptly led them to the AFC East title.

Mangini is now with the Browns (and Favre is retired, at least momentarily), but last year's experiences may have influenced his decision with his new club. Leading up to last month's draft, speculation had Cleveland trading Brady Quinn. It didn't happen, and apparently there were plenty of opportunities.

Kellen Clemens knows the deal. New head coach Rex Ryan spent the early part of the spring suggesting that the Jets would happily go into next season with Clemens and Brett Ratliff battling for the right to replace the eminently replaceable Brett Favre.

Pretty sure nobody believed that, including Clemens. The Jets were interested in Jay Cutler as he whined his way out of Denver, and when that didn't happen, they swapped first-round picks with the Browns and took Mark Sanchez (and sent Ratliff to Cleveland in the process).

Who moved to the head of the NFL class during the draft? Find out with FanHouse's team-by-team 2009 Draft Grades.

One of the most common criticisms of draft grades is that you can't possibly judge a draft until the players selected have spent some time playing in the NFL. It's a common criticism, because it's absolutely true and it may never be more true of any team than it is of the 2009 New York Jets.

Whatever winds up at the bottom of this post, the Jets draft grade will either be an A+ or F. There's no middle ground when you do something as gutsy, as fraught with risk as trading up to the fifth pick to take a quarterback.

NEW YORK -- Mark Sanchez wasn't at USC's spring practice Saturday, but when Trojans coach Pete Carroll called that night to congratulate Sanchez on being the No. 5 pick in the NFL draft, he gleefully told his former quarterback the story of what went down.

"He said they had a live feed of the draft on the Megatron video board there at the Coliseum," Sanchez said Sunday at Radio City Music Hall. "And every time an SC guy got picked, they'd stop practice. And he said when they showed that Cleveland had traded the (fifth) pick and that the Jets picked me, he said 25,000 people just went nuts."

Sanchez also admitted that Carroll must have been stopping practice a lot.

FLORHAM PARK, NJ -- For a guy who was generally acknowledged to be "winning" the first couple of days of the competition, Kellen Clemens had an interesting take on the fight for the Jets' starting quarterback spot.

"We're getting a lot of attention through all of this, but really, if you look at the five guys in front of us, our offensive line, they're going to make it easier for whoever the quarterback is," Clemens said. "Add in our special teams and our defense, and the way I look at it, whoever's playing quarterback for this team, the group that surrounds him is going to make it easier to perform."

Coming as it does from a man who very much wants the job, this is a jolting dose of perspective. Clemens is almost saying that it doesn't matter who the Jets' quarterback is, because the rest of the team is so good. But maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that Clemens has done so much deep thinking about this. After all, the competition for the Jets' starting QB job can't really start until after this weekend's NFL draft is over.

With the draft approaching, we ignore projections and identify the dream scenario for each team in a series we call The Perfect Draft.

The 2009 draft finds the New York Jets in an uncomfortable predicament. They have spent the last two years spending on free agents to put many aspects of a contending team into place. That's a big part of the reason why they started last season 8-3, and briefly had Jets fans thinking that big things were in store for their team. But a strong running game, sound defense and dangerous special teams are being undermined by an invisible passing attack.

After day one of New York's voluntary minicamp, new Jets head coach Rex Ryan spent the better part of a 25-minute press conference cracking jokes and talking confidently about his team. It wasn't all fun and games, though, as Ryan also had to briefly address the absences of quarterback Erik Ainge and running back Thomas Jones from the team's offseason activities.

Jones' absence is believed to be contract-related. The 30-year-old Jones is entering the third season of a four-year, $20 million contract, but is making just $900,000 base pay in 2009 and coming off a season where he racked up 1,300-plus rushing yards.

Brett Favre's retired (knock on wood), Jay Cutler wound up in Chicago instead of New York, and frankly, the Jets just need someone to start at quarterback next season. Currently left on the Favre-less roster are Kellen Clemens, Brett Ratliff and Erik Ainge, and of that group, only Clemens has seen NFL action.

So perhaps that's the reason why Clemens feels he's going to be the Jets' guy. On Thursday, Clemens told the New York Post that, "It's my full expectation to be under center opening day.