By Tom Rock
I guess Eric Mangini really is an outdoors guy. Despite the rain, despite playing an indoor game on Sunday, despite his apparent resignation to using the bubble this week, the coach had the team begin its practice outside. The ubiquitous music that accompanies practices was coming from the protection of the bubble, but the players stretched and practiced special teams in the elements. By the time we were ushered away from practice, some of the team had already filed inside. So Mangini got the best of both worlds, a few raindrops to harden the troops and a chance to practice with a roof over his head.
Apparently the whole outdoors thing is a Mangini peccadillo and not something he picked up from TOP (“the other place”), where practices were moved indoors on a more regular basis. If Mangini ever leaves the Jets for another job, you can certainly bet it won’t be to a team that plays in a dome. Even a retractable roof would probably be too much for this guy.
After shaking off the raindrops, we had Brooks Bollinger on the conference call. Remember him? He was traded to the Vikes late in training camp and probably would have been the starter this weekend had he not hurt his shoulder while replacing Brad Johnson two weeks ago. Brooks said he felt he was given a fair shake during the four-way competition here this summer, but did note that for all he knew a decision on his fate had been made before the first warm-up lap of training camp and his days as a Jet were numbered. Many observers feel that was probably the case.
We voted on the Good Guy award today, and while the results are being embargoed until a proper announcement and presentation can be made on Thursday, I will tell you how I voted. My ballot had Matt Chatham at 1, Pete Kendall at 2 and Laveranues Coles at 3. Had I gone deeper I probably would have taken Kerry Rhodes and Kevan Barlow. Overall, there are a lot of “good guys” in the locker room this year. Good quotes can be hard to come by – which weighed heavily in my voting – but good guys are pretty common. Among the guys whose company I’ve learned to enjoy, but who I’ve learned not to head to for any deep analysis or story-telling in a professional sense, are D’Brickashaw Ferguson, Kimo von Oelhoffen and Andre Dyson. Maybe that would be my ballot for Good But Quiet Guy of the year!