Penning10 Offensive Player Of The Week.

In terms of professional sports curses, the Dan Marino curse is low, low, low on the list.  The steal of Dan Marino in the 1983 draft followed by the record breaking career minus the Super Bowls of course ended with a wave of the hand as Dave Wannstedt simply pushed him aside.  As we all know the Dolphins have been searching for his replacement ever since.  It seems that just maybe, the Miami Dolphins may have found it in Chad Pennington…who today was named the NFL AFC Offensive Player of the Week.  The 9th time in his career.

Penning10 has brought to the team the one thing that has been lacking since Dan the Man left his cleats hanging in his locker.  Leadership and more importantly talent.  After Dan retired, Dave Wannstedt shouldered the burden of carrying this team on Jay Fiedler.  Fiedler had the drive and the intangibles that allowed him at time to use his mind to overcome his lack of true athleticism.  What Fiedler lacked in leadership and athletics he made up with heart and “want to”.  Unfortunately, that was never going to be enough.

From the time that Wannstedt left and Fiedler became expendable in his final season with Miami, the Dolphins went through way too many QB’s that bringing them up now is just an insult to the topic of this blog.  Chad Pennington.

Pennington lacks a great arm, but he makes up for that with gritty play, smart decisions, and quick reads of the defenses.  CP is making Miami fans forget about names like Culpepper, Feeley, and Harrington, Green, Huard, and Fiedler.  Pennington is the answer at QB that the Dolphins have been looking for since Marino ended his career.  Pennington is a leader and you don’t have to look anywhere but on the field to find it.

On the day CP joined the Phins he was seen introducing himself to his offensive players in street clothes during the teams first pre-season game.  In practice it was Pennington who took the charge to yell at the offensive WR’s who couldn’t catch a cold and an offensive line who couldn’t block anyone.  Pennington took this team on as his own.  So far, it’s working.

Pennington, to be fair, is not the second coming of Dan Marino and when you begin dissecting his future with the team, you are of course looking at next year and wondering which Chad will be the starter?  With Chad Henne waiting in the wings it is obvious that at some point the Phins will want to get a look at the rookie and get him in the game.  That however is not now, that’s later.  As long as the Phins keep winning, the Phins stay in the hunt for the division and for the playoffs and as long as that continues, Pennington has nothing to worry about.

The good thing about Pennington is that he will be here for at least 2 maybe 3 years.  As the starter or as a back-up he will be given the chance to compete and that’s what he wants.  For CP this team is not the 1-15 team that he faced 2 times last year as a New York Jet, this is his team, this is Tony Sparano’s team.  This is Dan Henning’s team.  In reality, this is their team.  All of them.  They play like it.  The coach it.  To them the production of this unit is not a job, it’s personal.  No one will accept losing as a normal occurrence.

The Dolphins may not make the playoffs, they are not expected to.  Chad Pennington will not have game like he did against Buffalo every week, and there will be games that will leave you shaking your head…of course we all would have imagined that after 7 games we would have seen that ugly roar already.  This season, Pennington has only thrown one really bad pass and even that one shouldn’t have kept the Phins from winning.

Truth be told, the Dolphins have a leader on the field and their future QB is sitting on the sidelines learning from him.  Now that is something to be smiling about.  Congratulations Pennington on your award this week…you deserve it, you deserve our thanks as well.