Jets Players Training in the Great Unknown

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Locked-Out Jets Players Are Training in the Great Unknown

By GREG BISHOP

Published: April 20, 2011

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As the N.F.L. lockout entered its second month, Jets linebacker Bart Scott said more fans had started to approach him, and they seemed more certain that the coming season was in jeopardy.

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Bill Kostroun/Associated Press

Jets linebacker Bart Scott with the team's owner Woody Johnson, left. Scott says he understands why people view the labor dispute as billionaires versus millionaires, even if most players don't make that kind of money.

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They stopped him at the gym, in restaurants, basically every time he ventured into public, and they wanted to know, as he would like to know, how the team owners and the players in the most popular spectator sport in the United States could not come to an agreement. The public’s perception, Scott said, is getting worse, for everyone, the longer the lockout lasts.

“I’m sure there will be a season,” Scott said. “I just don’t know what kind of season there’s going to be. Nobody knows yet.”

For now, locked out N.F.L. players, veterans, young players and free agents alike, have altered their routines. All say they hope the labor strife ends soon, but each must confront an uncertain reality, and they do so from different viewpoints.

The Free Agent

Even on a chartered fishing boat off the coast of South Florida, Kris Jenkins heard the same questions recently. Would there be football in 2011? And, where would he end up?

When the Jets released Jenkins in late February, he understood their reasoning. He had “gotten old a little bit,” Jenkins, 31, said, calling the decision a no-brainer after he tore knee ligaments in each of the past two seasons.

Now, Jenkins is at a career crossroads. He said more than one interested team approached his agent before the lockout started. He said Dr. James Andrews provided a positive second opinion on his knee. He said he lost more than 20 pounds while working out in Florida, freed from the stress related to the regular weigh-ins in his Jets contract.

“I’m happy,” Jenkins said. “For the first time in a long time.”

Still, he waits, the way a record number of free agents wait, nearly a quarter of the league, for a new collective bargaining agreement, for progress. Jenkins learned how to block out all the labor talk, what he calls the childish politics, and he found an unintended benefit in Florida.

There, away from an off-season conditioning program, he felt freedom, the antidote for the anxiety that built in recent seasons. On his own, he felt relieved.

“I guess the owners, they need their time to be greedy,” Jenkins said. “I’ve never seen a billionaire complain about not having enough money. But it’s cool. Usually, this time of year, you’re listening to a strength coach scream at you. In some ways, the lockout has been a blessing in disguise.”

The Player Rep

Once Jenkins’s teammate with the Jets, Jay Feely now kicks for the Arizona Cardinals, for whom he was the union representative last season. Feely is a licensed stockbroker who eventually wants to enter politics. He saved for the lockout and spent his additional free time in recent weeks helping his Feely Family Foundation work with Mission of Hope in Haiti, drawing orphans into school through soccer and football.

That work is gratifying, sure, but Feely wants an agreement as much as anyone.

“The fans don’t understand how a business with record revenue and $9 billion cannot find common ground,” Feely wrote in an e-mail exchange. “And frankly, neither can I.”

The Veteran

Scott, a linebacker for nine seasons, disagreed with the idea of these negotiations as billionaires versus millionaires, even if he understood the notion, which President Obama put forth in a recent news conference. Scott entered the league as an undrafted free agent with Baltimore, collected a $500,000 signing bonus and made $225,000, $300,000, $365,000 and $600,000 in his first four seasons. Most players, Scott said, are not millionaires; the median N.F.L. salary is indeed less than $1 million.

Yet the perception lingers. Scott does not expect anyone to feel sorry for him.

“It’s still rich versus richer,” Scott said. “I can see why people are upset.”

Scott says he hopes younger players have prepared, that they invested in the union’s lockout fund, which began making payments April 15. Like Jenkins, Scott found small-group workouts with teammates more beneficial than the full off-season conditioning programs, which, Scott said, “are sometimes for 10 percent of the people, more like day care, to keep guys around and out of trouble.”

With his extra free time, up to five hours a day, Scott dabbled in professional wrestling in recent months and trademarked “Can’t Wait!” — a phrase from his widely circulated postgame interview after the Jets beat the New England Patriots in the playoffs. He slept in more, spent more time with his children. Should the lockout continue into the summer, Scott said the Jets could hire a coach to simulate practices, or draw up seven-on-seven scripts; someone, he said, like Chuck Smith, a former Jets assistant who is familiar with the system.

Other Jets, Scott said, were working out with Sal Alosi, the former strength coach who was suspended and fined for tripping an opposing player last season. He resigned earlier this year. Because the Jets return both coordinators and will run the same systems as last season, Scott said they were better positioned to withstand a lockout.

“We might be better off for it,” he said. “Guys are working scared right now. I know I am. You can’t say you’re a leader and come in like a fat blob. You have to take the reins. That’s what most teams should expect.”

The Young Guy

Now entering his fourth season, Dustin Keller recently left the New York area for Saddlebrook Resort in Tampa, Fla., to resume training. When he surveyed the workouts, he found fewer younger players than he expected. “A lot of guys are postponing working out,” Keller said. “They see the lockout going later, into the summer. If the sides get something done, they’re going to be in for a rude awakening. I’m going to be ahead.”

Keller saved over the past two seasons. He cut his spending to 75 percent, stopped treating large groups at restaurants, or flying family members as often as before. He will spend the first week of May in Los Angeles with quarterback Mark Sanchez and other skill-position players, including, Keller said, the free-agent receivers Brad Smith and Braylon Edwards. Keller said a later camp would take place in New Jersey, but plans have not yet been completed.

All these plans, of course, hinge on the most uncertain backdrop, labor uncertainty that still seems far from resolution.

“Everywhere I go, people ask me about the lockout,” Keller said. “Some 60- or 70-year-old woman asked me about it the other day. I told her we’re going to have a season. Now an off-season. ...”

[Matt39]

It really isnt too much of a wonder now why Jenkins has worn out his welcome in 2 places.

[T0mShane]

It really isnt too much of a wonder now why Jenkins has worn out his welcome in 2 places.

Damn you. I was just posting, "Glad to see Jenkins working hard on that knee. Great investment there."

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Thought it was interesting that some of the Jets are working out with Sal Alosi