By Tom Rock
As Jonathan Vilma sat at his locker on Sunday, there was a strange sound wafting through the air. Muzak coming from a speaker? The muffled ringtone of someone’s cellphone?
No. It was the Jets defensive captain who was bent down, tying his shoes … and humming. A surprisingly chirpy tune at that, considering that the Jets had just suffered whiplash from watching the Bengals blow past them in the second half at Paul Brown Stadium. It was almost as if Vilma was enjoying a stroll through a park, pitching kernels of popcorn to nearby squirrels.
“(Kenny) Watson did a good job running, no doubt about that, and they did a good job blocking so you’ve got to give them credit,” Vilma said in answer to a question, then returned to his tune. “Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm.”
Vilma later said the humming was a tool he used because he couldn’t “really say how I feel” and he wanted to answer reporters’ questions with as little emotional weight as possible. If he didn’t make headlines by losing his cool, perhaps he thought no one would notice his team’s collapse.