There's always a lot going down for the Clown. And you can double that this weekend when David Clowney and the Jets visit the Dolphins in Miami.
Clowney, after all, returned to the team early this month after a few days away and is again running downfield on pass patterns and kick coverages. He'll be needed as much as ever on Sunday night because for however long Braylon Edwards doesn't play in this game, coordinator Brian Schottenheimer will need to call on another wideout if he wants to go three wide with Jerricho Cotchery and Brad Smith, and Clowney is the next man up.
"This week I'm hoping to get some playing time," Clowney said Friday in the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center locker room. "Nobody wants to see anybody get hurt or get in trouble, but anytime you step on the field you're going to relish the opportunity and try to take advantage of it. I'll be there just waiting for them to call my number.
"I've got a nice little role on special teams this week."
The game will always be foremost for Clowney, but a further wrinkle for DC is that his hometown of Delray Beach is less than an hour to the north of Sun Life Stadium. He said he won't be leaving the Jets' Fort Lauderdale hotel from the time the team arrives to the time it leaves for the game, but he'll see some familiar faces in the lobby and the restaurant just the same.
"Last year my familiy came down to the hotel and it was great to visit," he said. "It was an opportunity to see everybody and visit with them and with my brother."
Clowney, you may recall, is very close to his brother, Jordan Bean. He actually served as a single dad for Jordan in the Florham Park/Morristown area during the 2009 season. He said Jordan's doing great and brags on the speedy mighty mite's peewee football video that interested fans can find on YouTube. This year Jordan's back in the Delray area, playing his youth ball for a team in the semipro division of the West Boynton Football League that is called the Jets and whose coach happens to be a fan of the NFL variety of the Green & White.
Clowney has a further family tie to the area that some have heard about, since it involves another brother, Cameron Bean, who died in 2004 of heat exhaustion at the age of 12.
"Florida is still my primary residence so it's not like I only have one chance to visit his grave," David said. "I've done it in the past and I'll do it in the offseason." In fact, there is a feature that will air this weekend on "Jets Huddle" on the FiOS network in New Jersey and on Long Island that has a segment in which the Jets' cameras traveled with the wide receiver on an offseason visit to Cameron's final resting spot.
Clowney clearly has a big heart to go along with his nonstop motor. It's all enabled him to take care of his family in a way that not everyone is called on to do while also arranging missions to Haiti and Ghana and running a a foundation with its own football camp and, in November, its own charity bowling event. www.davidclowney87.com
The heart and the motor will be needed on the field on Sunday night, needless to say, but fans shouldn't worry about the Clown being distracted. Under similar conditions last October — night game in Miami, family in town and at the game — he excelled with one of his two best games as a pro, making four catches for 72 yards, including a career-long 53-yard catch-and-run.
"If anything happens and they call my name, I'm going to make sure I'm in there and doing everything I can to get the job done," he said.
And if Clowney needs a positive omen to sleep on and feed off of as he studies and meets and preps at the team hotel, he may well get one Saturday evening, when his family arrives and Jordan tells him how the Jets of the West Boynton league fared in its game that afternoon. Their opponent this weekend: the Dolphins, of course.
