Jets set to turn all the talk into action
Jets cornerback D.J. Reed spaks to reporters during the first day of training camp at the team's training facility in Florham Park, N.J., on Wednesday. Credit: Patrick E. McCarthy
The Jets haven’t felt this close to a Super Bowl since they kicked off the AFC Championship in Pittsburgh in early 2011.
This time it isn’t the Steelers and that one game that stand in their way, though.
It’s the 207 days between Wednesday, when they reported to training camp, and the big game in Las Vegas in February. It’s the next six and a half months, during which any number of things can go awry, any of the key contributors can suffer a season-altering injury, and all of the hype and hope that has clothed this team in the very foreign disguise of a contender can be stripped away.
The Jets won the offseason in a runaway. They landed the best and biggest name available to be their quarterback, saw key young players recover and return from injuries that scuttled last year’s season and, just last week, in a finishing flourish on their roster, signed their top defensive lineman to an extension to avoid a messy holdout. It’s no wonder the world is now descending on Florham Park to catch a glimpse of what they have put together, even if the attention isn’t all warmly welcomed.
And it’s no wonder every one of the Jets who showed up at the facility to get to work on Wednesday appeared to be doing so with a different urgency and attitude than they had in any year previous, in any place prior.
“The energy feels different,” cornerback D.J. Reed said.
Now comes the harder part: Winning the actual season.
That business begins in earnest on Thursday when the team the Jets have transformed themselves into on paper becomes the team that takes the field for the first time.
“That’s the main thing, the mental part of it,” linebacker C.J. Mosley said of changing gears from roster building to team building. “There is going to be anticipation from the outside. There are going to be things people are saying that we can do, that we can’t do, what people expect from us. But the only thing we can control is what we do in this building. If we keep taking each step every day the right way, then we’ll be in the right position later on.”
Wednesday was actually a rather gloomy day weather-wise with dark clouds and showers, but you would never have been able to tell it by the grins on the faces of those on whom this season is so dependent. More than one player spoke openly about their desire to get to and win a Super Bowl. More than one talked about the potential of the defense to be the best in the NFL.
“It was super spectacular to see,” said Quinnen Williams, the Pro Bowl defensive tackle who was holding out awaiting his newly-minted contract while the Jets were putting the rest of the pieces together over the last few months. “It’s spectacular to be part of a great organization that it feels like we’re going to the next level, taking this thing to the playoffs, taking this thing to the Super Bowl.”
It’s a time of year when every player says they are in the best shape of their lives, when every team is overflowing with moxie. Most times those sentiments are cause for eye rolls, but coming from these Jets on Wednesday they suddenly sounded realistic and sincere. Plausible, even.
And we didn’t even catch a true glimpse of the Big Umbrella himself, Aaron Rodgers, who arrived at the building wearing a black t-shirt captured only by the team’s own photographers then quickly slipped into his new business outfit — a full Jets game day uniform — for some more posed pictures released on social media.
Rodgers figures to be on the field Thursday acting, for the first time at his full physical capacity, as the team’s quarterback (he was limited in OTAs, you’ll remember, after a calf injury in his Welcome to New Jersey workout).
That alone is reason enough to make the Jets one of the most compelling teams in the league.
It should make them one of the best, too.
That designation has to be earned, however. Earned and re-earned over the course of a season.
This year is starting at a point higher than perhaps any in franchise history ever has. Not even the Super Bowl season itself carried this level of excitement at its commencement. Certainly none since 1999 has, and those expectations fizzled before the first game was over when Vinny Testaverde tore his Achilles. Jets fans have since learned – over and over again, often the hard way — to temper their anticipation, to be conservative in their euphoria.
Until now when such odd feelings seem impossible to stifle.
What will become of this campaign? There are only two ways it will end. There can’t be a middle. It will be very, very good, or very, very bad. We’re about to find out which.
For now, it’s all smiles. All optimism. All eyes bright and pointed ahead.
One day down. Only 206 more to go.
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.
