The worst part isn’t that Chad Pennington’s season is done, his career might be as well or you’re left wondering how many bad breaks a good guy has to take.

The worst part is this idea running through the conversation, like water through a pipe: this makes everything easier.
What makes that thought so terrible is it’s so true. At 0-3 on merit, exposed for its limited passing game, needing an answer on Chad Henne this season, the Miami Dolphins’ inner office knew they had to move on at quarterback at some point. If not this week exactly, then soon.
So Pennington’s injury is a mixed blessing in that regard. It takes away the decision. It means there’s no headlines, no controversy, no threat of a split locker room or the weighing of winning a few games in a lost season against finding the necessary answer for tomorrow.
It’s Henne’s time, ready or not. We’ve been through this before. Fans take sides. Media takes sides. But if going through this for the past decade tells us anything, it’s that no one knows anything at all when it comes to judging which quarterbacks make it and which don’t.
That goes for the Dolphins’ brass making the decisions, too. When Bill Parcells took over the Dolphins, he talked of putting a program in place and drafting his type of players. Then he said something only the guys who have survived a while can say with full understanding.
He talked of “having some luck” at finding a quarterback. That’s the needed ingredient, whether it’s Tom Brady going in the sixth round, Dan Marino slipping to the 27th pick or the Jets getting Mark Sanchez fifth overall.
Maybe the Dolphins used a few football generations of luck on Marino. You know the refrain of late: Dave Wannstedt passed on Drew Brees for cornerback Jamar Fletcher in a move that caused a draft-day fight behind closed doors. Then Nick Saban passed on Brees for Daunte Culpepper in a move where the Dolphins played the smart medical odds and lost. Parcells, in his first major decision, took tackle Jake Long over Matt Ryan, the great quarterback trumping the great tackle every time.
In the past five years, four different Dolphins regimes used five second-round picks on quarterbacks: A.J. Feeley. Culpepper. John Beck. Henne. Pat White.
They’re still looking for an answer. Maybe it’s Henne. Maybe he’s just another name passing through. It’ll play out soon enough. There’s no need to take a side, just to take a side, before the opening curtain really goes up.
Henne looked inconsistent in his second preseason, then unsteady in his first swings at San Diego. He missed some throws. He threw the kind of interception returned for a touchdown that young quarterbacks have on this team for years.
“I think that Chad made a couple of mistakes in there,” Dolphins coach Tony Sparano said. “One of those was the interception.”
Sparano said Henne can learn from that kind of mistake, then said, “Other than that, there were some location issues.”
He missed Ted Ginn Jr. a couple of times, though a better receiver might have bailed out the quarterback. That’s what Henne’s up against. It’s what Pennington was since he arrived and he did well enough to be second in the league’s Most Valuable Player voting last year.
“From a positive standpoint, he scored 10 points while he was in there on a couple of drives,” Sparano said. “I don’t think at any point during the game he was really flustered.”
In the first three games, the Dolphins faced talented quarterbacks Ryan, Peyton Manning and Philip Rivers. Sometimes, for all the hard work and all the overdone analysis, a game just comes down to who has the better quarterback.
The Dolphins need a quarterback like the ones they’ve faced this year. They need to know if it’s Henne. If not, they have to do what teams have done forever, what this franchise did right from the start.
In its first draft of 1966, Kentucky quarterback Rick Norton was a first-round Dolphins pick. He flopped. In 1967, Bob Griese was the first-round pick.
“I was going to keep taking one until I got it right,” former General Manager Joe Thomas said.
There’s a lot of football left this year. Henne needs to show he’s right for the job. If he’s not, well, another draft is coming.