Erik Boland: Inside the Jets

Bob Glauber, who never falls asleep, had this posted at the crack of dawn. The short of it is Tom Brady, in a radio interview yesterday, said he respected most teams in the league but not all.

Asked which team he didn't respect, Brady said, “There’s four letters in their name.”

The show's host, Glenn Ordway, providing the follow-up that should cut down significantly on "Spygate" questions leading up to the first Jets/Patriots matchup this season, said, “Those green guys?”

Brady laughed, "Yeah, exactly.”

Glauber's blog also has the link to the audio of the interview.

Is there an element of silliness to this as a "controversy"? Of course. The only surprise is Brady, normally cautious with the media, called out another team, and a division opponent at that. Whatever. No news that the Patriots don't like the Jets.

Ok, DKnyj, you asked for the numbers comparison between Kellen Clemens’ first eight games and some other standout quarterbacks, the premise being none really shined early. Note: For simplicity, these are the respective quarterback’s first eight games, not necessarily first eight starts because some started but for whatever reason didn’t finish games or did not start but played most of a given game. Enjoy.

Also, this is not an endorsement of one candidate, not that Eric Mangini, Mike Tannenbaum, or you for that matter, are perched on seat edges waiting for me to weigh in. I will, but I’ll wait until passes actually get thrown in minicamp, training camp and in the exhibition games. Besides, any such knee-jerk response from here before the competition even begins might bring a stern Sue Simmons-like rhetorical beatdown. I, for one, am glad I'm not on camera at all times. Cut Simmons a break. Anyway, those stats:

comp-att-yards-TD-INT
Clemens – 117—224—1,414—4—9
Aikman – 109—213—1,388—8—13
P.Manning – 161—292—1,873—11—16
E.Manning – 95—197—1,043—6—9
Bradshaw – 65—158—972—3—15

On a related note - kind of - media availability for this week’s OTA is Thursday. Besides keeping tabs on Clemens/Pennington, I’ll be interested in who is opposite Darrelle Revis at corner and what alignments we’ll see at linebacker, among other things. Chris Baker is not there, but that was expected. There are other stories as of now to write from the voluntary offseason program. On Thursday I do expect to see a somewhat chastened Erik Ainge, who probably had to watch the Simmons clip on loop after being a bit too forthcoming for the Jets liking in regard to disclosing injury info. Ah, rookies. [And keep in mind, this was a minor surgery on the broken pinky on his throwing hand Ainge played with all of last season].

Finally, the world’s most famous team video guy, Matt Walsh, met with Roger Goodell this morning. Bob Glauber, our NFL columnist, is covering the story for Newsday and will have updates on Goodell’s press conference. Bill Belichick got off easier than he should have, and his explanation of “misinterpreting” the taping rule was as laughable and dishonest as Roger Clemens’ “he misremembers” line about Andy Pettitte, but it’s time – barring any new evidence – for this story to end.

The Jets this afternoon signed free agent kicker Mark Myers, formerly of the CFL and before that a standout at Florida Atlantic University. At Florida Atlantic from 2001-04, Myers set 17 school records, going 43-for-59 in field goals. Never can have enough kickers in camp. Also, to clarify the 80-men-to-a-roster rule, draft picks don't count against the roster until they have officially signed, meaning with the addition of Myers, the Jets current roster size is 75.

Well, perhaps a little something, but admittedly not much and arguably not enough to interrupt the discussion going on in the comments section of the previous post. So anyway, here at Shea, as I’m assisting – or detracting from – Newsday’s Mets coverage today, there’s some Jets news. Not “news” in that sense, though. Jets Night, originally scheduled for April 28 at Shea but rained out, has been rescheduled for July 8, both the Jets and Mets organizations announced earlier today. Fans with tickets from that April 28 game who want to go to the July 8 contest need to go to Mets.com and follow the standard rain-check ticket exchange policy.

Among the former Jets planning to attend the evening are Joe Klecko, Wesley Walker, Greg Buttle, Emerson Boozer, Randy Beverly and John Schmitt. Those players, and others, will appear at a 5:30 p.m. fundraiser in Shea’s picnic area.

Also, as I previously mentioned in the comments section of that earlier post, the Jets begin OTAs this week. We’ll have reports on Thursday, when the media is given player access, from Hofstra. Ok, Rich, Mike, Darrell, Cliff, Big A, Jay, et al., have at it again. And to Dknyj…Baker-Gate? Quality sarcasm.

ESPN's John Clayton reported last night the money pool available to each team to sign this year's draft picks. The Jets have the 10th-highest figure, with $4,903,030 available to sign their six draft picks. Kansas City, by comparison, has the largest pool money – $8,221,790 to sign their 12 picks. Keep in mind as various picks get signed, those figures available to teams can be circumvented, to a degree, by inserting various incentives and roster bonuses into contracts. Most of these negotiations won't begin in earnest for another few weeks.

Also, in Newsday today, Bob Glauber writes about Matt Walsh and the tapes he has turned over to the league. There, apparently, is no smoking gun, no walkthrough before the Super Bowl victory over the Rams, nothing more than what the NFL had already punished the Patriots for [though the original punishment should have been harsher]. Walsh will still meet next week with Roger Goodell but Spygate is dying a natural death.

Hopefully dying with it will be the practice of affixing “gate” at the end of every controversy. We’ve had "Spygate" in the NFL and the NBA had "Ref-gate," and most recently the presidential campaign brought us “Bittergate.” It's annoying and lazy on the part of the media, and not particularly creative. Enough.

Thanks to Brian Bassett over at thejetsblog for having this, the video of Chris Baker on SNY's Wheelhouse late yesterday afternoon, posted this morning.

Sprinkled in with some pandering - which sounded as bad as anything heard out of the three presidential candidates - from the panelists, were a few good questions. And I agree with Bassett that the most important one came at the end.

Q: Did the organization ever tell you, ‘we will give you a new contract?’ Were those words ever spoken to you?”

A: Yeah, when I first signed it was, 'You go out and perform and we’ll see what happens. We’ll talk.' And there’s not much talking being done in the past few months."

Obviously, a they-said, I-heard situation that won't lend itself to an easy resolution. If Baker's recollection of that conversation is accurate, that's a pretty non-specific promise he claims the Jets made. The implication of a potentially bigger contract down the road is there, but then again, "You go out and perform and we'll see what happens," isn't the same as "Perform and we'll tear this contract up and do another one." Also, there was no mention of the contract money fronted Baker toward the end of last season.

The Jets do not comment on players' contracts - and haven't on Baker's to this point - so right now the only parties talking in public are Baker and his agent. That's fine as long as behind the scenes there's some kind of dialogue, but from listening to Baker yesterday afternoon, it doesn't seem like there is. Looking for good news from the interview? Baker did not sound especially angry and refrained from using any loaded or bridge-burning language in his answers. And each time he's spoken about this, he has emphasized he wants to stay in New York. I still don't see this as a Pete Kendall reprise. Yet.

The Jets this afternoon, in a move that had been discussed for weeks, re-signed unrestricted free agent cornerback Hank Poteat. Poteat started nine games for the Jets last season and appeared in all 16 games. The Jets, for now, have the maximum 80 players signed to their roster.