COURTESY OF NEW YORK JETS COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT
Opening Statement…
Just starting off with the injuries: (Jeff) Smith with the shoulder; (Breshad) Perriman with the knee; (Lawrence) Cager with the knee; (Denzel) Mims, hamstring; La’Mical (Perine), ankle; (Marcus) Maye with a calf; (Pierre) Desir with the hamstring; (Tarell) Basham with the ankle; Jabari (Zuniga) with the quad; Chuma (Edoga) was not out there with an non-COVID-related illness, so we’ll just make sure that you guys are aware of that. And we had a few guys that didn’t finish practice: Cam Clark, dehydration; (Braxton) Berrios; (Jamison) Crowder; (Chris) Hogan; and (Chris) Herndon. All kind of either had some tightness, so we just pulled them out of practice to finish it off. Herndon’s was a chest so they’re evaluating him right now to kind of see what’s going on there. I thought there was some good situational stuff that we were able to do today. Obviously we’re low on bodies right now, I had to make some adjustments as far as what we were doing, but I still think we got kind of the end of that training-camp-type things that we have to cover situationally and we did get some good work in with the guys that were out there.
Connor Hughes, The Athletic: Adam with Chris Herndon are you worried at all that that chest is related to what he dealt with last year with that?
I can’t answer that, they said they brought them in to evaluate him, so I’ll probably know more later today.
Rich Cimini, ESPN: What’s the extent of Perine’s ankle. Is that a long term?
I feel like we got lucky there. As bad as that looked, it’s a low ankle. We had MRIs, we did everything to make sure there wasn’t any kind of fractures, there wasn’t any ligament damage. So hopefully we’ll get him back a lot sooner than the way that play looked.
Charles McDonald, New York Daily News: If you get to the start of the season and you know, you’re still dealing with these injuries, how can you as a play caller make life easier for Sam (Darnold)?
That’s a good question. I’ll say this, today was a good example when we did that two-minute drive, Sam went out there, confident, trusted those guys that were with him. And I don’t think any of those three (receivers) have really have been playing the position that they’ve normally been playing with (Darnold). And he figured out a way to move the ball and finish that two-minute drive the right way. I think when he’s like that, that gives those guys confidence, they make the plays that they need to make when they’re there. I think that’s a big coaching point right there is, you have to trust those guys to do their job. These guys have been working hard just cause they haven’t been with you, it’s next-man-up mentality, we expect them to do their job correctly and if you’re confident in them, their confidence will be high as well and they’ll make the plays you need.
Brian Costello, New York Post: Adam, are you shaking your head at what you’re dealing with right now with all these injuries?
I do think we’re not the only ones. I think there’s a lot of teams in the league right now that are dealing with all kinds of injuries. It’s just, I don’t think it’s being publicized as much, you guys get to see this every day and then we go through the injury report. So I mean we’re not the only team, we just have to figure out a way to kind of maneuver around practice, schedule wise, and get everything we can out of the out of these days, whether it’s a shorter practice or different kinds of situations or more individual or a walkthrough, whatever we got to do to kind of get us ready and then just keep trying to get healthy and get guys back out there and get ready heading into next week.
Dennis Waszak Jr., The Associated Press: You’re right, the injuries, you see them all across the league, do you think that it can be attributed at all to guys not having had the full offseason coming in? Is there anything to that? What do you think it?
It depends. I mean every guy has such a different experience from this offseason because how many guys had access to gyms? How many guys had their own home gym to where they could workout? But it’s still never the same when you’re with a group like we usually are in the offseason because there’s a little bit of a competitive juices flowing, even when they’re lifting and running, there’s something about that right? You’re getting more out of those sessions I feel like than what you do if you’re just by yourself. And I think the majority of guys were like that. Some guys probably didn’t have access to anything, which is probably why you see quite a few injuries, but you know, when we get back here and then you take the number down to 80 and for us, it’s been two positions, especially that, or really three that have been hit multiple injuries, now all of a sudden, we were looking at rolling in today and our only running backs were Frank (Gore) and Le’Veon (Bell). Those two guys, their attitude was great, more reps for us and I’m going like “No, that’s not great, because we are 28 (years old) and 37 (years old),” like we got to be smart here. I love the fact that those guys were willing to go out there and carry the load, but, and Josh (Adams) stepped up today and found a way to take some reps off those guys, but you know, wide out, same thing, safety, same thing where you get low in numbers, now you’re trying to manage it and you’re moving guys, you’re moving corners to safety to try to make it through practice.
Connor Hughes, The Athletic: With Mims, Adam, still being out with that hamstring injury, is it fair to rule out any kind of legitimate, heavy early season work for him, considering he hasn’t practiced?
We’ll see, I’m not going to predict anything, hopefully we get him back towards the end of the week to where we can kind of see where he’s at and how he’s moving around and see if he’s used these last few weeks to really increase his knowledge of the offense. We’ll get him out there and we’ll kind of see what happens over the next 10 days.
Rich Cimini, ESPN: How did it feel to get Poole out there in a full-time capacity and how long will it take him to get up to speed conditioning wise?
It was great to see him out there and he looked good working. Even after practice, his jersey wasn’t a different color of green as everybody else’s. The last time we had him out there, I just remember looking over and seeing him soaked and I was thinking, wow, that was unusual for the first day. And he looks excited to be out there. He was bugging me for the last, like two or three days of, “I’m good, I’m good, I’m good.” I think our training room did a good job of making sure we’re checking all the boxes and we didn’t rush anything, even though he wanted to get out there. But to see him be able to get out there and the excitement he had, he looked like a guy that was his first day playing football, he was jacked up.
Brian Costello, New York Post: Adam, one guy we haven’t heard about in a while, (Patrick) Onwuasor, what’s his status? Is he out for like a long period of time?
Yeah, I think, I’m trying to remember when he actually got hurt, I feel like it was like a month ago, but it was probably like a week ago. It’s going to be, it’s probably going to be, four or five weeks we’re looking at here. Maybe another week longer, I’m not sure, I can’t remember.
Rich Cimini, ESPN: What went into the final kicking decision, obviously with (Sam) Ficken prevailing?
Well obviously, Brant (Boyer) and Hammer (Jeff Hammerschmidt), those guys are with those guys every day, they charted everything that they do. Sam’s been with us for a year, there’s a lot of trust there and I think he’s done a great job in training camp. We just got to keep working on getting better, which I feel like that’s all these guys do, right? Like it’s constantly working on their mental game, they’re working on their physical game. I mean, it’s like being a golfer, you just got to keep working on your stroke.
Brian Costello, New York Post: Adam, what have you seen from Le’Veon these
last practices in terms of the catching passes? It seems like he’s been very active there.
Yeah, we’ve made sure that with some of our install, we got the majority of it in and now we’ve been mixing it up a little bit. We’re trying to do a couple of things that maybe we haven’t done before or he hasn’t done before or some things that really they weren’t in the early parts of the install and we’ve got really kind of pretty deep and gotten those guys involved. Obviously, since we we’re down in limited backs as well, we thought kind of really kicking into gear with some of the passing game things with the backs, this was a good time to do it. Just kind of being careful with the run game as far as, we seem like we get a lot of bodies piled up there. I feel good about when these guys get in the passing game and I think he’s really, he can see his route tree really expanded and we keep trying new stuff and if he likes something, hey, we make sure that we run that again and if it doesn’t like something, we’ll throw that thing away.
Rich Cimini, ESPN: (Bell) caught 66 passes last year and yet it still seemed like there was more out there, like different ways you could utilize him. Do you feel that was the case last year?
So, you’re saying he touched the ball a last year, is that what you are saying? I was just checking. (joking) I feel like we can find better ways to get him the ball to help him create more explosive plays. We can get him in space better than what we did last year. I think that there was a lot of good that came out of what he did in the receiving game last year. But I don’t think we ever really gave him enough space to work, because that’s his game. If he gets space to work, he’s going to make a guy miss. Or if a DB is trying to tackle him, he’s hard to bring down against the secondary guys. So, if we can keep finding different ways to mix it up, whether we’re formation, free releasing, putting him in empty, coming off of play action. I think we just got to really use the whole gamut and find as many different ways to get him to ball in space as possible.
Dennis Waszak Jr., The Associated Press: Adam, is Desir close?
Yeah, I think there’s about three guys I think that, I don’t want to jinx myself, but I think there’s about three guys that over the next few days we should at least see in individual and then progressing from there. I’m looking at that as a big positive, especially because they’re all DBs or wide receivers. The whole thing is making sure that we progress the right way, so we don’t get them out there and all of a sudden, we lose them again. Now we’re talking about, it’s going to be a while before they get back.
