10/15 — The one player award that Eric Mangini always seems to savor announcing following a Jets victory is his Practice Player of the Week. And this weeks' PPOTW, which the coach revealed at today's morning news conference, is a name we haven't heard for a while: WR David Clowney.

"He's a guy that's had a little bit of a 'vacation,' so maybe he has some fresh legs,' " Mangini said. "He did a good job last week of pressuring our defense.' "

And Clowney applied that pressure by impersonating the Bengals' Chad Johnson, or Chad Ocho Cinco — take your pick.

"Yeah, I was doing some of that in practice: 'Throw it to Ocho!' " Clowney said today in the locker room before this week's first practice for Oakland. "I was having fun with it.

"I just wanted to bust m y butt as hard as I could. Playing Chad during the week, I wanted to make sure I gave the D the best looks possible."

It seems to have worked. Last season Johnson caught three balls for 102 yards. Sunday he had five catches but never shook free and settled for almost half that amount, 57 yards, with no completion longer than 16 yards and no catches during fourth-quarter crunch time.

The good news for the always upbeat Clowney is that two months after he injured his shoulder in the second preseason game when Redskins rookie CB Justin Tryon landed hard on him after a diving catch, he is getting close to contributing in a regular-season game.

"I felt I was ready to go last week against the Bengals, but they told me they wanted to take it one more week to play it safe," he said. "I'm doing everything I can to get back to playing, at receiver and on special teams. I'm hoping I can do something."

That remains to be seen, of course. RB Jesse Chatman just returned to action vs. Cincinnati and CB Justin Miller is close, too. So there are several players vying to be activated each week. But perhaps we're getting closer to seeing "Uno Siete" — that's 1-7 in Spanish — strutting his stuff on Sunday rather than behind the scenes from Wednesday through Friday.

Quotes from the Coach

Here are two quotes from the coach today, one serious and as you'd expect, the other showing the whimsical side of the Jets' third-year boss.

On "making a statement" with a road win over the Raiders:

"I really haven't talked in those terms whatsoever. The playoffs might well be two years from now in terms of how many games have to be played to get there. Really, there's been no discussions along those lines. We never advocate those discussions. There's so much football left. All that matters is Oakland."

And on if Kris Jenkins is a better chef or nose tackle:

"He's never offered me anything he's cooked. It's hard to say without first-hand experience. I did see some piece, I don't know what network it was on, where he was putting truffle oil in his eggs. He didn't strike me as a truffle oil kind of guy. Appearances can be deceiving."

Notes from the Coach

Mangini's other award-winners: Offense — T D'Brickashaw Ferguson; Defense — Shaun Ellis; Special Teams — Wallace Wright. I'll have a feature on Brick later today.

Mangini announced some "housekeeping" at the top of the news conference that included the announcements from late Tuesday of the activation of S Eric Smith, the waiving of OL Will Montgomery and the release of LB Brandon Renkart from the practice squad.

Another move this morning was the signing of Kyle DeVan to the P-squad. DeVan (6'2", 306) was the Oregon State free agent who was signed July 17, spent camp with the Jets, then was a final cut Aug. 30.