Cimini: Notes from Jets West

[flgreen]

Brad Smith discusses free agency; other notes from "Jets West"

May, 3, 2011

May 3

11:06

PM ET

By Rich Cimini

MISSION VIEJO, Calf. -- Brad Smith was the only one of the Jets' three free-agent wide receivers to show up for the first two days of Mark Sanchez's "Jets West" camp in Southern California. (Braylon Edwards is in the area, but skipped the first two workouts.) Smith said role will be an important factor when choosing a team.

"If a team is willing to give me that opportunity to do a little more ... you only get to play this game one time," he said Tuesday. "You don't want to be in a place where they don't give you that opportunity, and they understand that."

Smith has made a tremendous impact as a kickoff return and as the "Wildcat" quarterback, but he's never really had much of a role as a receiver. The Jets just drafted two receivers, Jeremy Kerley and Scotty McKnight. Kerley, chosen in the fifth round, is a Smith-like player -- versatile.

Smith suspects the team drafted Kersey to cover itself in the event he leaves as a free agent, and he said he has no problem with that. Smith's problem, if you could call it that, is that he won't be an unrestricted free agent if the 2010 rules are kept in place. He'd be restricted, severely limiting his market.

ARMS RACE: Sanchez, who injured his throwing shoulder late last season, warmed up by attaching a long elastic band to the goal post and extending his arm. That, he said, has been his routine for the last six months. He said he expects to do "a ton" of throwing this week, claiming his shoulder feels great.

JOLT TO JOE: One year after drafting Joe McKnight in the fourth round, the Jets did it again, selecting Bilal Powell of Louisville. Asked how he felt about that, McKnight didn't sugar coat anything.

"I was pissed and motivated at the same time," he said. "It really doesn’t make any difference; it's just more fuel to the fire."

McKnight said he got used to crowded backfield at USC, where they had 11 running backs on the roster. He had a forgettable rookie season, riding the bench until the meaningless regular-season finale. In that game, he opened some eyes with a 159-yard rushing performance.

Rex Ryan said McKnight has earned a bigger role, but the decision to draft Powell wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement.

ROLL CALL: For the record, the Day 2 turnout at "Jets West" consisted of:

Quarterbacks -- Sanchez, Mark Brunell, Kevin O'Connell, Greg McElroy

Running backs -- Tomlinson, Joe McKnight, John Conner

Receivers/tight ends -- Smith, Dustin Keller, Patrick Turner, Jeff Cumberland, Logan Payne, Kerley and Scotty McKnight.

FAMILY AFFAIR: It was Mark Sanchez's camp, but he received plenty of help from his family -- brothers Nick and Brandon and his dad, Nick Sr., all of whom attended Tuesday's workout. It's a closely-knit family; they always seem to be together. That's pretty cool.

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[lamont_jordan_rules]

. It's a closely-knit family; they always seem to be together. That's pretty cool.

... must be a full moon ... cimini actually said something nice about the jets ...

l_j_r

[flgreen]

... must be a full moon ... cimini actually said something nice about the jets ...

l_j_r

He’s out there alone. He was probably afraid that Scotty would come to his room and glue him to a wall

[stoicsentry]

Greg McElroy is ALREADY there practicing with them? ALREADY???? Wowwwww. It's not like the guy lives in SoCal or anything either. That's impressive.

[Bleedin Green]

Greg McElroy is ALREADY there practicing with them? ALREADY???? Wowwwww. It's not like the guy lives in SoCal or anything either. That's impressive.

Yeah, that jumped out to me as well. That's awesome. From the sounds of it, if there's anything that keeps McElroy from being successful, it certainly won't be a lack of effort. Very nice thing to see out of a backup QB.

Noticed that Clemens isn't there, although I doubt anyone really gives a sh*t. Be interested to know what Braylon's deal is considering there was a lot of reports about him showing up for this and Holmes not, yet he's there but not participating, that just seems strange. Would also be interested to know where Greene is. You've got the other young guys in McKnight and Conner showing up, and even the old vet in LT there, so what's his deal? It's not like he couldn't use the most work on receiving skills out of any of those guys.

[T0mShane]

No Braylon? That's surprising. Also note that Shonn Greene isn't there.

[#27TheDominator]

Greg McElroy is ALREADY there practicing with them? ALREADY???? Wowwwww. It's not like the guy lives in SoCal or anything either. That's impressive.

That was the first thing that jumped out at me too, but so are Kerley and (the new)McKnight. McKnight is buddies with Sanchez, but Kerley being there is at least as surprising as McElroy. I don't blame anybody for not going. Working without getting paid isn't something I'm going to demand.

[flgreen]

Jets West Camp underway in California thanks to the leadership of Gang Green QB Mark Sanchez

BY Manish Mehta

DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER

Wednesday, May 4th 2011, 4:00 AM

Jets QB Mark Sanchez embraces his leadership role by organizing Jets West Camp, which is attended by the likes of Dustin Keller (in ice) and LaDainian Tomlinson (signing autographs).

Reed Saxon/AP

Jets QB Mark Sanchez embraces his leadership role by organizing Jets West Camp, which is attended by the likes of Dustin Keller (in ice) and LaDainian Tomlinson (signing

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MISSION VIEJO, Calif. - The mastermind of Day 2 of the Jets' camp installation plan was wearing a specially designed green T-shirt and a mesh baseball cap. He ran the meeting like a seasoned pro, going over protections, formations, shifts and motions. He showed his 14 pupils film of various pass concepts pulled from highlights he loaded onto his laptop. He looked, acted and sounded every bit like a coach.

Amid the upside-down world of the NFL lockout, Mark Sanchez took the next step in his evolution as the unquestioned leader of a team with Super Bowl aspirations. With the help of his two older brothers, Nick and Brandon, and his parents, the 24-year-old quarterback put together Jets West Camp, a week of studying and workouts designed to keep Rex Ryan's team sharp while the league navigates its way through the courts.

"It's just assuming command and understanding that I'm leading this entire group along with Rex," Sanchez said Tuesday. "When Rex can't be with them, I'm the guy. I'm the coach on the field. It's my job to coordinate things like this."

For the second consecutive offseason, Sanchez has done what great leaders do: Disguise work in the form of fun.

With a lockout looming, Sanchez was savvy enough to load up highlights after the season to his laptop to use precisely for this camp. He structured a plan by using concepts in an old Jets playbook before adding some new elements. He made copies for each of the 14 teammates who showed up. With no contact with teams allowed, he called agents, uncles and anybody else he could think of to make sure rookies such as Jeremy Kerley received an invitation. "He sounds like a coach in the meeting rooms, telling everybody what to do, what to expect," said LaDainian Tomlinson. "Even watching film, he sounds like a coach."

In the morning meetings, Sanchez mimics offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer's training camp scripts. The focus for this week is "precision and timing of the passing game."

"We go through some questions, crack a few jokes in the middle and then come out on the field and work," Sanchez said. "It's great for me to see how much work, time and effort goes into putting on just one meeting."

Said running back Joe McKnight: "He wanted us to know that he's ready to take this to the next level and everybody is jumping on with him."

"There's not many teams that are doing this," Tomlinson said. "The teams that are doing it, it will get them a win or two extra.

"...So we hope it pays off for us when the season starts."

McKnight admitted he wasn't thrilled with the Jets' decision to draft Louisville running back Bilal Powell to add to the logjam in the backfield. "I was (ticked) and motivated at the same time," he said. "It's just more fuel to the fire."

Brad Smith was "a little bit" hesitant to come out to the workouts because he's not under contract. The Jets gave Smith a restricted free agent tender as a sixth-year player as a protective measure in case the 2010 uncapped rules are reinstated. He'll be an unrestricted free agent if a new collective bargaining agreement is reached.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/jets/2011/05/04/2011-05-04_qb_leadership_is_on_the_mark.html#ixzz1LOhopB00

[Jetsfan80]

Huh. I always thought "Jets West" was "the Arizona Cardinals".

[flgreen]

QB Mark Sanchez is organizer, leader at 'Jets West' camp in California

Published: Tuesday, May 03, 2011, 11:30 PM Updated: Wednesday, May 04, 2011, 11:45 AM

Jenny Vrentas/The Star-Ledger By Jenny Vrentas/The Star-Ledger The Star-Ledger

MISSION VIEJO, Calif. — Mark Sanchez sat in the middle of the dimly lit room, wearing a sleeveless cotton shirt and rattling off formations and play calls like an auctioneer.

On the projector screen, he prepared to show cut-ups from last season, the ones he smartly loaded onto his laptop in the days before the NFL lockout began. Seated around Sanchez, with pencils and homemade playbooks, were a future Hall of Famer (LaDainian Tomlinson), a 40-year-old backup quarterback (Mark Brunell) and three of the NFL’s newest players (rookies Jeremy Kerley, Greg McElroy and Scotty McKnight).

The 14 men here are all Jets teammates. They are all locked out. And they were all listening to Sanchez.

“It’s just assuming command,” the 24-year-old Jets quarterback said later in the afternoon. “Understanding that I’m leading this entire group along with (coach) Rex (Ryan), and when Rex can’t be with them, I’m the guy. I’m the coach on the field, and it’s my job to coordinate things like this.”

Sanchez, with the help of his family and his high school alma mater, hosted a similar camp — dubbed “Jets West” — here in Southern California last offseason, too, albeit under different circumstances. Then, it was a way for him to put in extra work with teammates after being limited in the spring following offseason knee surgery.

This year, with the on-again, off-again lockout on again, Sanchez’s five-day passing camp is the kind of organized team activity players have been left to organize on their own. The camp schedule includes an optional morning workout with Todd Norman, Sanchez’s longtime trainer, followed by a film session, hour-long practice and catered lunch at the high school.

Evenings are for seats at Lakers playoffs games and Cinco de Mayo celebrations, before players head back to their oceanfront villas. The remaining roster of players present on the second day of camp Monday: tight ends Dustin Keller and Jeff Cumberland; running back Joe McKnight; fullback John Conner; receivers Brad Smith, Logan Payne and Pat Turner; and quarterback Kevin O’Connell. Braylon Edwards, a free agent, is in California and expected later in the week.

“We hear about a few teams, but there’s not a lot of them and I tell you what: the teams that are doing it, it will get them a win or two next year,” Tomlinson said. “So if that means we win 13 games next year, we hope so.”

The Giants and Saints are among the other clubs whose players have taken their own initiative. The Jets fall into the class of teams better equipped to do so, because they have an entrenched starting quarterback, which in years past wasn’t the case.

But since Sanchez started his first game as a rookie, he has embraced the role as an offensive and team leader — even if that took time and growth. He admitted the lockout, which bars him from spending hours at the facility like he did last spring, “can’t help your development” — but he’s determined not to let it hurt him.

When he studies film, he tries to imagine what offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer or quarterbacks coach Matt Cavanaugh would tell him. In their absence, a coach’s role seems to come naturally.

During the session on the practice field, Sanchez gently steered Kerley’s body in and out of the correct break. During the film session, as he reviewed the installations made on the first day of Jets West, he reminded his teammates about inside releases, spacing and modifications for man or zone coverage, smoothly calling out their names or referencing plays from last season.

“That’s something eventually Schotty will want Mark to do anyways,” Keller said. “Obviously he doesn’t want him to take his job, but just to be up there and kind of take the reins.”

Sanchez also had to take the reins in organizing Jets West — with the help of his close family, and the loving Mission Viejo community in which the high school’s secretaries popped in and out of the assistant principal’s office seemingly hourly, asking when Sanchez was coming and if they could help.

His dad helped set up the canopies and the ice baths in tubs from a tack and feed store. The school’s trainers counted cases of Gatorade to make sure there was enough for the week, and renowned quarterbacks guru Bob Johnson fetched the overhead projector for the film room.

Older brother Brandon set up the daily catered lunch, from local hotspots like In-N-Out Burger. Oldest brother Nick, fresh from the hospital where he and his wife welcomed a baby girl on Monday, presided over the whole operation — and used his law office to print the makeshift playbooks Mark Sanchez designed.

When the Jets drafted four offensive players Saturday, the whole family scrambled to invite them, finding phone numbers through agents and uncles since contact with the Jets was prohibited.

The objective of the camp is to work on the precision and timing of the passing game but, really,

it’s about much more.

“It’s that kind of leadership that has really taken this to the next level,” Sanchez said, “in becoming more than just a quarterback on the field.”

And in doing so, Sanchez hopes he can help take his team to the next level — which, based on the past two seasons, would be the Super Bowl.

Jenny Vrentas: jvrentas@starledger.com

[Gastineau Lives]

Huh. I always thought "Jets West" was "the Arizona Cardinals".

I thought it was The Clippers.

[flgreen]

Seems like Sanchez has really taken a leadership role on this team. The fact that he got 14 players out there is impressive.

Greene’s absence bothers me quite a bit. He needs work in the passing game big time

[flgreen]

SAM FARMER / ON THE NFL

Mark Sanchez leading "Jets West" at Mission Viejo

Mark Sanchez is leading informal practice sessions at his old high school. NFL's appeal will be heard by U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals on June 3.

By Sam Farmer

May 3, 2011, 7:57 p.m.

Just because the NFL is encountering its most turbulent time in decades, that doesn't mean all Jets are grounded.

Quite the opposite.

More than a dozen members of the New York Jets are participating in an informal passing camp in Mission Viejo this week, organized by Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez. The quarterbacks, receivers and running backs — without the help of the franchise — are breaking down video from last season, poring over cobbled-together playbooks, then throwing and catching on the field at Mission Viejo High, Sanchez's alma mater.

So Tuesday, as the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals was announcing it had fast-tracked the NFL's appeal and will hear it June 3, Sanchez was working with teammates that included veterans such as LaDainian Tomlinson, Dustin Keller and Brad Smith, as well as several first-year players.

"If you have a rookie quarterback who has never learned the system, there's no way you could put on a camp like this," said Sanchez, the former USC star whose Jets came one victory away from the Super Bowl in each of the past two seasons. "If you don't know who's going to be your starter, it's very difficult to put on a camp like this. We're fortunate that way. We're trying to take every advantage we can and try to win one more game.

"If this helps us win one playoff game, get one game at home in the playoffs, whatever it takes, then it's really paid off."

Although the practices are largely informal — with players in shorts, T-shirts and baseball caps — they're purposeful and well organized, an impressive substitute for what would be a post-draft minicamp had the NFL not locked out the players. Sanchez has nicknamed the sessions "Jets West," complete with a logo featuring a Jet flying between the Manhattan skyline on one side and palm trees on the other.

"We're going over protections, formations, shifts, motions, pretty much in that order," he said. "Then we get into play concepts, runs, and pass concepts.… We go through any questions, talk about things that we need to, crack a few jokes in the middle, and then come out on the field and work on it."

Sanchez organized a similar camp last July (the summer after his rookie season) because he wanted to work on timing with the receivers who couldn't work with him in the spring while he recovered from shoulder surgery. That camp attracted the scrutiny of the NFL, however, when the league learned Coach Rex Ryan and offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer had stopped by to watch practice sessions, which is against league rules. An unnamed team had filed a complaint.

If a player were hurt at the camp, the team wouldn't be obligated to pay anything. Since the collective bargaining agreement expired, NFL players have been responsible for their insurance coverage.

"They understand the risks they're taking," Sanchez said. "But at the same time they need to work out, and they know that, and they'd be working out at home."

Even if there were no lockout, the Jets franchise could not play a role in the camp, meaning Sanchez would have to book a field, provide the footballs, and coordinate everything. But the fact he cannot have contact with the team makes matters even more challenging.

"The toughest part with this lockout is trying to get phone numbers," he said. "We can't call anybody.… We're going through agents, going through other agents that know somebody's uncle, reminding them that we have Jets West going."

Sanchez said he can envision holding this type of camp every off-season, and his family plays a big role. His parents and two brothers have helped arrange sponsors, including those that provide food, drinks and apparel for the players. The group goes to a Lakers game, and most of the Jets stay at a beachside resort, with some players bringing their families. The trainers at Mission Viejo High also have helped, setting up massive ice tubs for the players, as has Mission Viejo Coach Bob Johnson.

"Just seeing Coach Johnson every day, he's in there making sure we have an overhead projector, throwing guys water during the meetings, passing out pencils, and he doesn't have to do any of that," Sanchez said. "So we're pretty fortunate to have him helping us."

The players are serious about getting work done, not mingling with fans and signing autographs. That didn't seem to bother the small scattering of spectators — at one point there were 17 of them — putting up with the borderline uncomfortable heat to watch from the stands. Sanchez has started a Facebook page (www.facebook.com/OfficialMarkSanchez) to post behind-the-scenes pictures and videos from Jets West.

The concept of a quarterback being a coach on the field is nothing new. Now, though, his teammates get to see Sanchez leading meetings, organizing drills, dispensing advice … basically doing the types of things a coach would do. And they've been impressed.

"If you ask Mark if he'd been able to do this a couple years ago, he'd probably tell you no," Tomlinson said. "He sounds like a coach in the meeting room, telling everybody what to do and what to expect. Even watching the film, he sounds like a coach.

"And really that's what your quarterback is."

sam.farmer@latimes.com

[LWC611]

Does anyone else think that it is not smart, from a personal stand point, for the new draft picks to be at the camp when you consider the possiblity of injury. There is a difference between being a free agent veteran (who should have some money put away) and a draft pick who has yet to negotiate his deal and has received no compensation. If Kerley tears up his ACL then what.......

[slats]

Does anyone else think that it is not smart, from a personal stand point, for the new draft picks to be at the camp when you consider the possiblity of injury. There is a difference between being a free agent veteran (who should have some money put away) and a draft pick who has yet to negotiate his deal and has received no compensation. If Kerley tears up his ACL then what.......

Meh...

How hard do you think these guys are working? There are no defenders, no pads... I think it's more schoolwork, with a little bit of catch out on the field. The guy's just as likely to get hurt on his own as he is in Mark Sanchez' day camp.

[flgreen]

Does anyone else think that it is not smart, from a personal stand point, for the new draft picks to be at the camp when you consider the possiblity of injury. There is a difference between being a free agent veteran (who should have some money put away) and a draft pick who has yet to negotiate his deal and has received no compensation. If Kerley tears up his ACL then what.......

They probably have a better chance of being injured shooting hoops in the drive way. Happens all the time

[LWC611]

They probably have a better chance of being injured shooting hoops in the drive way. Happens all the time

Yeah ask Chad Pennington......