At Jets camp, you're never too old to learn some new things
Jets offensive tackle Morgan Moses speaks to reporters after his first training camp practice in Florham Park, N.J., on Friday. Credit: AP/Dennis Waszak Jr.
Tyron Smith pulled rookie Olu Fashanu aside during Jets practice this past week to impart some veteran wisdom. Nothing out of the ordinary there, seeing a decorated and experienced player passing along some tips to the next generation. But as the future Hall of Fame offensive tackle was sharing his ideas with the first-round pick, a third player approached the O-line lesson.
It was Morgan Moses, a 10-year NFL vet himself.
There to add his part to the tutorial, no doubt?
Hardly.
Moses was there to try to drink up some of the knowledge Smith was pouring.
“I’m sitting there like, ‘Yo, Tyron, what did you say?’ ’’ Moses recalled of his intrusion.
Even as he enters what figures to be the closing stages of his long and successful career, Moses, 33, back with the Jets for a second stint this season, is on the lookout for ways to improve.
He’s come to the right place for that, too. Jets training camp has turned into a football think tank this summer, with some of the most cerebrally sophisticated players in the league leading daily seminars in the sport’s most high-level concepts.
While that certainly is a gold mine for relative newcomers — rookies such as Fashanu and even young third-year stars that include Garrett Wilson, Sauce Gardner and Breece Hall — those at the other end of the roster’s age spectrum seem to be learning just as much.
Moses and 32-year-old linebacker C.J. Mosley, both at stages of their careers at which they presumably would be in the role of team professors, instead find themselves attending invaluable classes each day to expand their education.
“Your IQ, it’s always rising because you’re talking ball on the field and you’re talking ball off the field,” Moses said of the experience. “They’re lying if they tell you as a vet that you can’t learn more.”
Having 40-year-old four-time MVP Aaron Rodgers on the field and in the meetings is, of course, like being taught by Dumbledore himself. But even Rodgers can pick up new tricks. He’s spoken this summer about adjusting to Wilson’s unique skill set. “I gotta get on his page, too,” he said.
He also takes more input this year from Jets coach Robert Saleh, who brings the perspective of a defensive mind to their conversations. Saleh seemed more willing to cede control of the offense to Rodgers and coordinator Nathaniel Hackett last summer but noticeably has been much more involved with them this camp.
“Last year was the first year, even for me, just being exposed to a system that had a quarterback like Aaron,” Saleh said. “It’s just different learning a new system under Hack and just trying to understand the quarterback. Now knowing all of it after being in it for a year, I just feel like I can give them my thoughts from a defense perspective. Certain concepts, formations, route concepts, run concepts that hurt us, that hurt 3-4 teams, that hurt 4-3 teams, to help them kind of formulate this identity that we’re trying to find.”
With each snap the defense lines up against Rodgers’ crew, Mosley, himself already esteemed as one of the sharpest chess masters in the game, is pushed to learn something new from their schematic duels.
“If I do see him check to something and he maybe sees us rotate somewhere or showing the pressure, I’ll just switch it,” Mosley said. “Even though he might know that we might switch the call, that’s still helping our defense be able to adjust on the slide or adjust quickly to something else . . . We’re trying not to show and he’s trying to see what we’re doing. And if we do get a tell, now we know what we don’t need to do to not show those things because he’s one of the best at putting his offensive players in the right positions.”
When those happen during the traditional practice periods, at least there is a play clock ticking in the background. Eventually either Rodgers or Mosley has to just go with the play they are in. During the walk-throughs, though, Rodgers sometimes will take close to a minute to diagnose the defense and adjust his pieces.
“We give him a little Giannis [Antetokounmpo] shot clock and are like, ‘Ten, nine . . . ,’ ” Mosley said of counting down the way fans do when the NBA star stalls at the free-throw line. “But jokes aside, he’s setting his guys up . . . If he sees us as something, he sees us about to show up with pressure, he checks to that side. And I’m able to change the pressure or change the rotation. So it’s all helping everybody at the end of the day — even though he has a lot of time.”
Moses, who played with MVP quarterback Lamar Jackson in Baltimore last year, said being in a Rodgers huddle (which he experienced for the first time on Friday) is incomparable to any other in his career.
“You’re talking about a guy that just sees the game way ahead of schedule,” Moses said. “And when you have that . . . it just makes you raise your IQ up a lot. A lot faster, a lot higher. And you start seeing the game as he sees it, right? And when you go out there and you expect greatness from yourself and he expects greatness from you, man, it’s just contagious. It’s a contagious feeling.”
One with no age limit to it.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
