Chad Pennington started yesterday’s game answering the critics who say he lacks the arm strength necessary to be an NFL quarterback. He ended the game by giving those critics even more fodder.

Pennington showed that he can throw long. His first pass went 22 yards along the right sideline to tight end Sean Ryan, and his second traveled close to 50 yards in the air and landed perfectly in Laveranues Coles’s outstretched arms for a 57-yard touchdown. But with 37 seconds left in the fourth quarter, with the Jets down eight and the game on the line, Pennington made the wrong decision and threw the interception that wiped away the Jets’ last chance.

The Jets’ 38–31 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals wasn’t all Pennington’s fault. It wasn’t even mostly Pennington’s fault. He finished 20-of-31 for 272 yards, with three touchdowns, and that late interception was his only pick of the game. Without Pennington’s solid passing, the Jets never would have had the 23–10 lead that they ultimately handed away. Pennington was fine.

In fact, for most of the game, he was more than fine. On that long touchdown pass to Coles, the Cincinnati secondary showed that it didn’t think Pennington would be able to deliver the ball, and he made them pay for it. Coles made a double move, first turning to the inside as if he would run an out route, and the Bengals’ defensive backs, thinking Pennington would only throw short, bit on that fake. That opened up the deep middle of the field, and Pennington put the ball in the perfect spot for Coles to run under it and score.

Pennington also showed considerable guts, especially on a third-and-five in the fourth quarter, when he somehow broke the tackle of Bengals defensive end Justin Smith, who had him set up for what should have been an easy sack, and then sprinted around

the end of the line and finished his run with a head-first dive, sticking the ball out just far enough for the first down.

Having the guts to take a hit is essential to playing in the NFL, and having the ability to throw a ball 50 yards in the air is nice. Throwing the ball far isn’t the same as throwing it fast, though, and Pennington’s biggest fault is that his passes tend to hang in the air too long, giving the defense time to pick them off. Even though that only happened once yesterday, the Jets’ defense is playing so badly that the quarterback has to be practically perfect to give them a chance to win. There are a few quarterbacks in the NFL who can lead their teams to victory even when the defense collapses, and Pennington isn’t one of them.

The defense is the Jets’ biggest problem, as it showed immediately after that long Pennington-to-Coles touchdown. The very next play from scrimmage was a 56-yard completion from Carson Palmer to Chad Johnson, who beat David Barrett in coverage. Palmer picked apart the Jets’ pass defense, completing 14 of 21 passes for 226 yards. Johnson caught three of the four passes thrown to him, with the completions going for 56, 29, and 17 yards, and he also had a 15-yard run on a reverse.

Giving up big plays to stars like Palmer and Johnson is understandable, but getting beaten by Kenny Watson is inexcusable. And Watson, playing in place of the injured Rudi Johnson, was the Bengals’ most effective offensive player against the Jets. Watson ran through the Jets’ defense for career highs in yards (130) and touchdowns (three).

The Jets’ defense could be excused for giving up chunks of yardage to second-string running backs if it also forced turnovers and made big plays, but that hasn’t happened nearly enough this season. The Jets forced just one turnover, an interception by Hank Poteat, and had just one sack, courtesy of Bryan Thomas on the Bengals’ first possession.

The Jets’ mistakes on defense outnumbered those few big plays: They had no penalties in the first half, but picked up five for 62 yards in the second, including three that gave the Bengals first downs. All three of those first downs led to touchdowns.

The most costly mistake of the game, though, came on offense. With the Jets down 24–23 but driving in the fourth quarter, Pennington was lined up to take a shotgun snap when he looked away to shout instructions to one of his receivers. Center Nick Mangold, who didn’t realize Pennington had looked away, snapped the ball, which bounced off Pennington and into a pile, where Bengals defensive tackle Domata Peko came up with it.

It’s tough to blame that fumble on Pennington — it was just one of those bad bounces that can happen to any football team. But the official statistics attribute the fumble to Pennington. Similarly, it’s tough to blame the Jets’ 1-6 start on Pennington — he’s just the quarterback of a team that’s playing badly. But it was his interception that sealed the loss that dropped the Jets to 1–6, and there’s no reason for a 1–6 team to keep the 31-year-old quarterback who has led them to 1–6 on the field, not when there’s a 24-year-old quarterback standing on the sidelines. At some point, the Jets need to take a long look at that 24-year-old, Kellen Clemens, to evaluate whether he can be their quarterback of the future.

Pennington isn’t the Jets’ biggest problem. But he’s the Jets’ most fixable problem, and it’s time for Clemens to start.