Erik Boland: Inside the Jets

Well, perhaps a little something, but admittedly not much and arguably not enough to interrupt the discussion going on in the comments section of the previous post. So anyway, here at Shea, as I’m assisting – or detracting from – Newsday’s Mets coverage today, there’s some Jets news. Not “news” in that sense, though. Jets Night, originally scheduled for April 28 at Shea but rained out, has been rescheduled for July 8, both the Jets and Mets organizations announced earlier today. Fans with tickets from that April 28 game who want to go to the July 8 contest need to go to Mets.com and follow the standard rain-check ticket exchange policy.

Among the former Jets planning to attend the evening are Joe Klecko, Wesley Walker, Greg Buttle, Emerson Boozer, Randy Beverly and John Schmitt. Those players, and others, will appear at a 5:30 p.m. fundraiser in Shea’s picnic area.

Also, as I previously mentioned in the comments section of that earlier post, the Jets begin OTAs this week. We’ll have reports on Thursday, when the media is given player access, from Hofstra. Ok, Rich, Mike, Darrell, Cliff, Big A, Jay, et al., have at it again. And to Dknyj…Baker-Gate? Quality sarcasm.

ESPN's John Clayton reported last night the money pool available to each team to sign this year's draft picks. The Jets have the 10th-highest figure, with $4,903,030 available to sign their six draft picks. Kansas City, by comparison, has the largest pool money – $8,221,790 to sign their 12 picks. Keep in mind as various picks get signed, those figures available to teams can be circumvented, to a degree, by inserting various incentives and roster bonuses into contracts. Most of these negotiations won't begin in earnest for another few weeks.

Also, in Newsday today, Bob Glauber writes about Matt Walsh and the tapes he has turned over to the league. There, apparently, is no smoking gun, no walkthrough before the Super Bowl victory over the Rams, nothing more than what the NFL had already punished the Patriots for [though the original punishment should have been harsher]. Walsh will still meet next week with Roger Goodell but Spygate is dying a natural death.

Hopefully dying with it will be the practice of affixing “gate” at the end of every controversy. We’ve had "Spygate" in the NFL and the NBA had "Ref-gate," and most recently the presidential campaign brought us “Bittergate.” It's annoying and lazy on the part of the media, and not particularly creative. Enough.

Thanks to Brian Bassett over at thejetsblog for having this, the video of Chris Baker on SNY's Wheelhouse late yesterday afternoon, posted this morning.

Sprinkled in with some pandering - which sounded as bad as anything heard out of the three presidential candidates - from the panelists, were a few good questions. And I agree with Bassett that the most important one came at the end.

Q: Did the organization ever tell you, ‘we will give you a new contract?’ Were those words ever spoken to you?”

A: Yeah, when I first signed it was, 'You go out and perform and we’ll see what happens. We’ll talk.' And there’s not much talking being done in the past few months."

Obviously, a they-said, I-heard situation that won't lend itself to an easy resolution. If Baker's recollection of that conversation is accurate, that's a pretty non-specific promise he claims the Jets made. The implication of a potentially bigger contract down the road is there, but then again, "You go out and perform and we'll see what happens," isn't the same as "Perform and we'll tear this contract up and do another one." Also, there was no mention of the contract money fronted Baker toward the end of last season.

The Jets do not comment on players' contracts - and haven't on Baker's to this point - so right now the only parties talking in public are Baker and his agent. That's fine as long as behind the scenes there's some kind of dialogue, but from listening to Baker yesterday afternoon, it doesn't seem like there is. Looking for good news from the interview? Baker did not sound especially angry and refrained from using any loaded or bridge-burning language in his answers. And each time he's spoken about this, he has emphasized he wants to stay in New York. I still don't see this as a Pete Kendall reprise. Yet.

The Jets this afternoon, in a move that had been discussed for weeks, re-signed unrestricted free agent cornerback Hank Poteat. Poteat started nine games for the Jets last season and appeared in all 16 games. The Jets, for now, have the maximum 80 players signed to their roster.

Because I wrote about Danny Woodhead, the NCAA’s all-time leading rusher from Division II Chadron State who was signed by the Jets as a free agent, before the recent rookie minicamp, I didn’t give too much in the way of reaction to him from the past weekend. Eric Mangini will of course do “what’s best for the team,” but he did seem to take a liking to Woodhead.

From Saturday’s press conference: “He’s hard to find, and for a couple reasons, you know?” Mangini said of the 5-7 ½ Woodhead, who sometimes gets rounded up to 5-8. “[There’s] the obvious one. And he’s pretty quick, he’s pretty elusive and he’s done a good job mentally picking up the information. We just have to see how that continues to develop. But I’ve been pleased with what I’ve seen early on.”

In the little bit of practice we were able to watch last weekend, Woodhead never stopped moving. No one’s a lock based on a three-day rookie minicamp, but I’d be surprised if a spot for Woodhead isn’t found somewhere.

Some final observations - for this morning anyway - on the just concluded three-day rookie minicamp:

-Jeremy Kapinos consistently boomed towering punts during the time the media was allowed to watch minicamp and while the Kellen Clemens/Chad Pennington battle will be – and should be –the headliner of training camp, the Kapinos/Ben Graham one will be worth watching, too.
“We’re going to look at both those guys and give them an opportunity to state their case,” Eric Mangini said Saturday.

- Enamored might be a tad strong, but Mangini clearly believes the Jets got a steal in cornerback Dwight Lowery, the team’s fourth-round pick. Mangini praised Lowery pretty effusively on Friday and Saturday, with one of his Saturday answers, in discussing a predraft interview session with Lowery, providing this memorable quote:

“He comes in and he could explain what he was doing at the corner position, but he could also explain what the whole secondary was doing," Mangini said. "We had some film there, so if it was a blitz or some kind of zone blitz, he could explain what the linebackers were responsible for under these coverages. He saw the whole picture from the corner spot, where a lot of times those corners come in, they can explain, ‘Okay, I got that cat,’ and that’s pretty much it. But you want them to be able to see the big picture so they understand how they fit, and [Lowery] did.”

Two things from that answer: 1. Justin Miller, coming off surgery, better be ready to bring it during camp. And, 2. Mangini, indeed, did use the phrase, “I got that cat.” As good as you think it sounded...it sounded even better.

- Kansas wide receiver Marcus Henry, the team’s sixth-round pick, has enormous hands.

- One interesting thing from the locker room on Friday and Saturday was the general wide-eyed look players gave in talking about the difference in the size of the playbook they received this week as compared to what they had in college.

“Oh man,” Erik Ainge told me Saturday. “It’s about two inches taller. There’s a lot of information, obviously, but that’s part of it. That’s part of coming here, not knowing anything, and you have to learn.”

I asked Henry the same question.

“You have no idea,” he said, shaking his head.

Finally, I’m calling for a moratorium on the phrase “win-now mode” in describing the Jets for this season. I’m the first to include myself among the guilty who have uttered, or written, the phrase, which already in early May has become stale, tired and devoid of any real insight. I'm done with it, or at least until we start writing that a given team is in a "win-later" mode.

The Jets just now confirmed the signing of Hofstra offensive lineman Shawn McMackin, a tryout invitee to the just-concluded rookie minicamp, to their roster. The team waived two players: Brett Byford, a center from Nebraska, and Al Phillips, a cornerback from Wagner. Both were among the 10 rookie free agents the Jets signed shortly after the draft's conclusion. The Jets currently have 79 players - each team is allowed 80 - signed to the roster.