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Draft Ahead (So Is Jets Talk Live Draft Show)

Tick … tick … tick …

That’s the sound of your favorite draft countdown clock. Or if you don’t have that countdown clock on a computer screen in front of you, it’s the internal draft clock echoing down the college canyons of your mind.

The NFL Draft finally arrives tonight, and for Jets fans it can’t come soon enough. GM John Idzik said the draft will be the Green & White’s lifeline, and with beginning with picks 9 and 13, the team will begin to pull itself toward 2013 with, at the moment, eight selections from tonight through late Saturday afternoon.

We say at the moment because there’s no need to tell Jets fans that all draft picks (except compensatories, of which the Jets have none this year) can be spent on other picks. It’s possible the Jets could package 9 and 13 and move into the top five in this draft. It’s also possible that the I-Team will entertain phonecalls from other teams about wanting to trade up to one or both of the Jets’ high first-round positions and thus that they could trade down and pick up at least one extra pick for each move down.

Purely as a mental exercise using one of the now ubiquitous Draft Trade Value Boards, if the Jets were to drop from, say, No. 13, just a few spots, the trading partner would need to send over something high in Round 4 to the Jets for the privilege. A Jets tradedown to around No. 20 would be in the high-third-round neighborhood. A move to the mid-20s might bring a mid-second-round choice in return.

But just as surely the Jets could stand pat at Nos. 9 and 13 and pluck the top-ranked player on their value board at that time for the move into the future.

Here’s one more bit of trivia for draftniks as we wait for the last few hours to slip-slide away. Since the first AFL-NFL common draft in 1967, the Jets have spent the No. 13 pick on a player twice:

■ In 1973 they tabbed Miami safety Burgess Owens, who had a solid 10-year NFL career, the first seven spent patrolling the Jets’ deep middle.

■ In 2000 they selected South Carolina DE John Abraham, one of the best pass rushers in franchise history for at least six seasons, which is the amount of time he spent in green and white, accumulating 53.5 sacks before he was traded to Atlanta in 2006.

Similarly the Jets also have used the No. 9 pick on a pair of players since ’67:

■ In 1972 they chose Jackson State WR Jerome Barkum, who went on to play both wideout and tight end in his distinguished 12-year Jets career.

■ And in 1995 they grabbed Penn State TE Kyle Brady, who unfurled an efficient 13-year pro career, the first four seasons with the Jets, then eight with Jacksonville, then as a contributor to New England’s Super Bowl team in 2007.

I remember Brady getting a bit of a boo-bird ballad cascading down from the Jets fans in the Paramount Theatre at Madison Square Garden that year, and Brady saying later, slightly mystified, that he didn’t quite expect that kind of reaction.

Certainly that is possible at any draft from the Jets faithful, but I just have a feeling that the reaction will be favorable tonight — two picks in the top 13 with all but a handful of the best college players available for the picking at either spot. At 10 minutes maximum per pick, we’d expect the Jets to make the first selection of the Idzik regime somewhere around 9:30 p.m. EDT.

Before-Show on NewYorkJets.com

If you’ve got that computer, SmartPhone, BlackBerry, etc., available at any time from 6:30-8 p.m., check out the Jets Talk LIVE predraft show. Eric Allen, my partner, hosts the festivities from the season ticket holders draft party at MetLife Stadium. He’ll have a whole bunch of Jets players and other celebrities for on-camera interviews, recorded features, and several guest phone-ins (one of whom will be yours truly reporting from Radio City Music Hall just before the start of the draft around 7:45 p.m.).

Here at the Jets we do a great job of putting on a predraft televised special (if I do say so myself), and this year’s before-show figures to be the best yet.

And on Sunday, Some Good Cheer

As if the draft isn’t enough in the Jets universe, the team will wrap up the weekend with the 2013 New York Jets Flight Crew audition finals at MetLife Stadium. Director Denise Garvey will welcome 54 finalists to the audition — 26 Flight Crew veterans and 28 preliminary- and semifinal-round contestants.

In the early afternoon the finalists will present dance routines and kicks taught to them during the semifinal round. And by 4:30 p.m., Garvey plans to announce up to 40 members of the 2013 New York Jets Flight Crew.

The audition finals are closed to the public, but we’ll let you all know who made the Flight Crew Class of ’13 as soon as we can on Sunday.

Barnes Will Put His Speed to the Test as Jets LB

Antwan Barnes was fronting for several constituencies as he climbed the steps to the top of the auditorium at the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center the other day to talk to Eric Allen for Thursday’s new episode of Jets Talk Live.

He had on his navy blue New York Yankees cap and his navy blue Florida International sweats. And everything underneath was green and white.

“It’s a pleasure,” Barnes said in his first public remarks — other than via Twitter — about becoming a Jets linebacker via unrestricted free agency. Signing with the team, he said, was “something that I wanted to do. Rex was trying to get me two years ago but I turned him down. So when the opportunity came up again, I told him I wasn’t going to turn him down this time.”

Barnes’ relationship with the Jets head coach goes back to his first team, the Ravens, who drafted him in the fourth round, 134th overall, in the ’07 draft and added him to their defense, then being coordinated by Rex.

“This is pretty much the only team I wanted to talk to,” Barnes said. “I didn’t see myself going anywhere else,” Barnes said. “From the outside looking in, they needed a pass rusher and I was thinking I could come here and compete and be a pass rusher.”

Barnes, the 6’1″, 251-pounder who grew up in Miami, has some pro personnel analysts who look at his 23.5 sacks in six pro seasons and say, well, he might be able to supply some of that to the Jets. But others take note of the 18.5 sacks he had in his last three seasons with the Chargers — including the eye-opening 11 he had in ’11 as he moved into the starting lineup for a while for the injured Shaun Phillips — and think he’s a rusher on the rise.

AB definitely is a confident player, but he’s also well aware of the competition mantra around Florham Park these days.

“Me being in my seventh year in the league, sometimes you’ve just got to play your role,” he said. “Whatever role they have for me, I’m going to play to the best of my ability.”

One of his abilities is his speed. He tips his hat to his alma mater, FIU, in reflecting back on the 2007 NFL Combine, when he hung up a 4.43-second time in the 40-yard dash that is still amazing.

“I still have that speed,” he insisted. “They gave the [fastest-linebacker] title that year to one guy. I thought I had the fastest time. I just wanted to represent FIU well at the combine.”

Quincy Black, just released by Tampa Bay last month, was that LB who nosed out Barnes by an unofficial one-hundredth of a second, 4.42 to 4.43, in the ’07 combine. Those were not only the two best times for linebackers in Indianapolis that year but remain the best two times by all linebackers in the last eight combines … combined.

Barnes has done his tour of the country, from the East Coast to the West Coast and back again. He sees new horizons opening for him here in North Jersey.

“I’m going from sunny-no-rain-clear-skies-every-day San Diego to hard-core, snowy New Jersey,” he said. “My daughter already knows the Jets chant — she’s 4 years old. My family are Dolphins fans but they told me they’re going to switch over and be Jets fans now.

“This is pretty much what I need,” he said with his quiet, confident smile. “I’m looking forward to it.”

You can hear all of EA’s interview with Barnes, plus his chat with Rich Cirminiello of College Football News.com about the Jets’ draft needs, beginning tomorrow at 3 p.m. ET on newyorkjets.com when the JTL segment first airs.

Another NFL Coaching Competitor Passes

One day after we remembered Jack Pardee, whose teams had a few head-to-head battles with the Jets over the years, we must take the heavy duty of eulogizing one more coaching competitor in Chuck Fairbanks, 79, who died Tuesday in Scottsdale, Ariz., from brain cancer.

Fairbanks first burst on the football scene as Oklahoma’s head coach. After six years of leading the Sooners to the upper echelons of college football, he moved on to raise the fortunes of the New England Patriots. From 1967-72, the Patriots were 22-62-1. In six seasons under Fairbanks, they improved to 46-40 with two playoff appearances, although the last, in ’78, was tarnished by Fairbanks’ attempt to leave before the postseason for the University of Colorado.

Fairbanks’ Patriots were 6-6 against the Jets’ collection of five head coaches during that period — Weeb Ewbank (2-0 in his last season at the helm in ’73), Charley Winner (2-1), Ken Shipp (1-0), Lou Holtz (0-2) and Walt Michaels (1-3).

Coordinators Talk About ‘Great Challenge’ Ahead

Today is Coordinators Thursday on newyorkjets.com, but not in the same sense that it was every Thursday during the season. This is the first day the Jets’ three new coordinators will speak publicly about their new gigs. My partner, Eric Allen, interviewed all three this week here at the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center and those sitdowns will air this afternoon on Jets Talk Live and then will be archived

Each man — Marty Mornhinweg for the offense, Dennis Thurman for the defense, Ben Kotwica for the special teams — presents a different personality on air and in the building as they continue to work with their staffs while the players are still five weeks away from reporting back to the complex for the offseason strength and conditioning program.

Marty brings a light touch to his teaching, plus a modesty about his résumé that sounds as if it goes all the way back to his own background as a signalcaller.

“I’ll tell you what, I’ve been really fortunate, that’s first. I’ve coached some of the greatest quarterbacks ever to play this game,” he said. “Brett Favre was a great, great player. Of course, Steve Young in San Francisco, a first-ballot Hall of Famer. And then Donovan, that was one reason that Philadelphia at the time was so enticing, because Donovan McNabb was there. What a great quarterback he was. And Michael Vick in 2011 had just an astronomical year.”

Mornhinweg likes to refer mugs of joe when he’s talking about short-lived events. Even though he was with the Eagles for the last decade, he was aware of Favre’s “cup of coffee” with the Jets in ’08. And he described his own time playing for the legendary Mouse Davis in the Arena League as “half a cup of coffee.”

MM’s the only coordinator completely new to Rex Ryan’s staff. DT has been here with Ryan since ’09 and for six seasons coaching alongside Rex on the Ravens. He’s the kind of guy who has that football edge to him, like let’s stop screwing around and do it the right way, yet he also has that bit of playfulness to his persona.

“I’m outgoing, upbeat, love to have fun. But I also know the fun that comes with winning,” Thurman said, adding about his step up from the DBs room to running the entire defense: “I can’t change who I am. It’s just a matter of instead of having 11 or 12 guys, I’m now responsible for probably 30 guys. But it’s no different. Everybody has to do their job, they have to know their job, they have to understand their job, and then they have to go out and perform their job.”

Kotwica’s been with the Jets the longest of the trio, since Eric Mangini brought him out of the Army and on to the specialists under Mike Westhoff. He’s armed with the Westhoff experience plus his own straightforward sense of being able to command a football unit because of his military service as a decorated combat attack helicopter commander and training officer.

“I don’t go too far with the football-is-war approach, but there are parallels and carryovers. Even in the military, you are a coach,” the new Coach K said. “Mike and I are different guys, but first and foremost he was a great mentor to me, not only tactically with X’s and O’s but strategically. And he’s a great friend. I’m very grateful for what he’s taught me.”

It’s no surprise that each coordinator will bring a different approach and style to his unit, different from each other and different from the men they’ve succeeded. But all three will have one very similar guiding principle. They’re all involved in framing a new house on the existing foundation, and they all expressed enthusiasm for the hard work ahead.

“I love challenges,” Mornhinweg said. “This is a great challenge. That’s why I love doing what I do because I get to work with some of the great athletes in the world, really.”

“Leadership is something you either have or you don’t,” said Thurman. “I don’t think you can cultivate it or manufacture it. So we’ll let it play itself out. Yeah, we lost some veteran players, some experience, but some of the guys are going to have to step up and play. And they can be leaders in their own right.”

“Special teams isn’t a solo job. It’s a team effort, and we’re looking forward to it,” Kotwica said. “Things are going to be OK in 2013.”

Enjoy EA’s conversations with the threesome on Jets Talk Live in a few hours.

Buses Are Preparing to Roll North to Cortland

The Cortland Express is boarding shortly. The Jets’ third trip in four years to training camp in Cortland, N.Y., south of Syracuse, slightly to the right of Ithaca and nestled near the Finger Lakes, is about to begin.

The Jets’ quarterbacks, rookies and injured veteran players underwent their physicals and conditioning runs on Monday and have been working at the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center through today. Thursday morning they’ll be joined by the rest of the squad for their physicals and conditioning runs. Then rookies, some veterans and coaches will board charter buses, the rest of the veterans will hop in their rides, and they’ll all meet several hours later at the dorms on the campus of SUNY Cortland.

Before the buses roll up Neubig Road for the media throng that will await them at the dorms, they’ll make a stop in the middle of town to be part of a welcoming parade and arrival ceremony being staged by the campus and the community. The Jets should arrive downtown at about 3 p.m. ET, with head coach Rex Ryan and some of the rookie draft choices expected to address the crowd from the platform on Main Street between Court and Port Watson.

For more on the banners that have been raised and the general greening of Cortland, read the story and see the short video clip on WBNG’s Web site here.

You can find the public schedule for training camp here or by going to the Training Camp 2012 widget on the newyorkjets.com home page. The short version through the coming weekend is that the Jets, after arrival, will receive Ryan’s welcome message for them on Thursday evening, then break up for meetings.

Friday will be the first practice of camp, which is closed to the public.

The practices on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday will be open to the public. All are scheduled to begin with stretching at 8 a.m., and Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday are scheduled to be full-pads practices. (Tuesday is the players’ off day, Friday’s practice is closed.)

Next week’s schedule concludes with the Green & White practice at SUNY Cortland, set for Saturday, Aug. 4, from 6-9 p.m. The following week wraps up on Friday, Aug. 10, with the Jets’ preseason opener at Cincinnati.

Eric Allen, senior reporter and director of Internet programming, along with new reporter John Holt, will join me as we cover the start and finish of camp, followed by the start and finish of the season. So come along with us as we get this party started.

‘Jets Minicamp Live’ Set for Tuesday Afternoon

The New York Jets will kick off their veteran minicamp on Tuesday at the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center, and you’ll be able to hear from some of the participants immediately after practice.

Join us for “Jets Minicamp Live” on newyorkjets.com, hosted by Eric Allen, at 1:20 p.m. Tuesday as we talk about Day 1 with a few players and maybe a coach or two.

If you have a question or comment on the Jets’ camp, please write us now on Facebook.com/Jets, on twitter @nyjets or right here with a comment to the Radar on newyorkjets.com. We will get to a bunch of live questions during our stream as well, so fan participation is encouraged. Check out “Jets Minicamp Live” Tuesday afternoon or catch the archived show here on the site.

Pettine Will ‘Deconstruct the D’ Live on Tuesday

In three seasons as Jets defensive coordinator, Mike Pettine’s unit has finished first, third and fifth in total yardage allowed. He is already at work on his 2012 defense with OTAs under way and he’ll stop by our Jets studios at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 29, to give us a progress report.

“Deconstructing the Defense” will be simultaneously broadcast live on newyorkjets.com and on Facebook. Eric Allen will host the program and fans can send in their questions for Coach Pettine via twitter.com/nyjets, Facebook.com/Jets and here on the Radar. The show’s archive will also be made available shortly after the live broadcast.

The Green & White have made a number of alterations to their defense, drafting the likes of DE Quinton Coples, LB Demario Davis and safeties Josh Bush and Antonio Allen in April. Perhaps the biggest changes have taken place at safety where veterans LaRon Landry and Yeremiah Bell were added in free agency and both are expected to make immediate contributions. Nose tackle Sione Pouha also inked an extension and veteran OLB Bryan Thomas — the longest-tenured Jet — continues to work his way back from last year’s Achilles injury.

Eager to rebound from a .500 record, head coach Rex Ryan has indicated he’ll take a more hands-on approach on defense.

We’ll have Pettine in-studio to discuss all things “D” on Tuesday. We encourage Jets Nation to submit your questions now to twitter.com/nyjets, Facebook.com/Jets and here on the site.

Live Draft Chat Tonight on NewYorkJets.com

The NFL is about to kick off Day 2 of the draft, and we invite you to join us live for a live chat at 7 p.m. ET.

Jets Nation can follow Rounds 2 and 3 here on newyorkjets.com as we’ll take questions and comments now and live as comments here on the Radar, on Twitter@nyjets and on Facebook.com/Jets.

Eric Allen will host  the video portion of the chat in Round 2 and newyorkjets.com editor-in-chief Randy Lange is scheduled to make an appearance as well.  Then we’ll continue with a text-based chat in Round 3 as we continue to provide round-the-clock coverage of the Green & White.

We’ll take questions and comments early, so fire away.

Green Team Descends on Indy for Combine

All offseasons are important, so it would be hyperbole to say that this offseason, which really gets off and flying today through Sunday at the NFL Combine in and around Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, is the most crucial for the Jets in a long time.

Yet the combine workouts help each team identify players it will be most interested in selecting in the draft two months down the road, and it’s not exaggerating to say that the Green & White have just a little more at stake at this combine simply because they have more draft picks than they’ve had in a while.

The Jets at the moment have one selection in each of the draft’s seven rounds. In the first three rounds they are slotted to select 16th overall, then 47th, then 78th, based on their rotation among the seven teams that finished 8-8 this past season.

From there the overall positions are not set because the NFL has yet to allot this year’s compensatory draft picks. But the Jets do have their own picks in Rounds 4-6, and a pair of trades have enabled them to retain a Round 7 pick (Jacksonville’s in the Dwight Lowery trade) as well.

If the Jets use all seven picks to select players in the draft, it will be their most selections since they spent 10 picks in the 2006 draft.

They could also get one or more compensatory selections this year, but that won’t be revealed for another month. The league traditionally has announced its distribution of compensatories in the last week of March. Last year it awarded 32 compensatory picks to 23 teams, with those picks falling at the end of each round from Rounds 3 to 7.

Compensatories aside, the Jets’ personnel team, headed by general manager Mike Tannenbaum, and head coach Rex Ryan’s coaching staff have all left North Jersey on Tuesday and today for Indy, where they will observe the more than 300 top prospects who’ve been invited to get poked and prodded, measured, tested and interviewed at this year’s combine.

Tannenbaum and Ryan are scheduled to speak with the assembled reporters from the NFL’s media workroom podiums around 3 p.m. ET on Thursday.

The information gleaned this week will be folded in with the college scouts’ game reports and all the other data on hand to formulate the team’s big board, which will inform the selection of those seven, maybe more, maybe fewer, players who will become the Jets’ 2012 draft class.

My partner, Eric Allen, and cameraman Chris Ubbens will also be on hand for the combine festivities, interviewing all the Jets staffers in Lucas Oil, plus a healthy number of those top prospects and more than a few of the reporters who have also made their annual pilgrimage to Indianapolis.

EA’s and Ubbs’ work will be processed by Rich Gentile’s broadcasting & multimedia staff here at the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center to provide you with great video content this week and then in the weeks from the end of the combine through the draft, set this year for April 26-28.

You can also follow the combine proceedings on NFL Network, Sirius XM NFL Radio and NFL.com. To help you keep tabs on the players who might be featured on those platforms, here is the schedule for the different position groups that will be available for interviews each day:

Thursday — Offensive linemen, kickers, punters, long-snappers, tight ends

Friday — Quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers

Saturday — Defensive linemen, linebackers

Sunday — Defensive backs

EA and Cameras at the Combine in Indy

Howdy. We’ve been lying low for the last few weeks because, quite frankly, there hasn’t been a lot to report on around the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center. But we’re coming up on draft season, which means the chat will begin to increase on newyorkjets.com about the NFL Combine and such matters beginning today.

My partner, Eric Allen, and Chris Ubbens of our multimedia crew arrived at Lucas Oil Stadium this morning and hit the ground running for the kickoff of the combine interviews in front of the assembled media, which EA tells me has shown up in force today.

Among the interviews for the assembled are “select NFL head coaches and general managers.” And two who have been selected for that duty are Jets head coach Rex Ryan and GM Mike Tannenbaum. Fresh off their star turn taping a CSI: New York episode on the West Coast, they’re now in Middle America and scheduled to step up to the podium for probably 15 minutes each beginning around 3:30 p.m. ET today.

At the moment I have no information regarding Rex and Mike T being streamed live or archived anywhere. We are not able to do that as we normally do for Ryan’s in-season news conferences. It’s possible NFL Network or NFL.com will carry parts of those media sessions but I haven’t received that information yet.

But Nick Gallo and I will be monitoring the Ryan and Tannenbaum pressers to bring you a full report on what they got into with the media group, which is usually a good mix of New York area football reporters and columnists and the national media types we’re so familiar with.

EA will be making the rounds for the next three days out in I-town, checking in with some of those national reporters, plus Rex, Mike and Joey Clinkscales, the Jets’ vice president of college scouting, plus some of the big-name draft prospects that you want to hear from. Job One for Allen is to get everyone on camera for newyorkjets.com and Facebook, but he may check in with us from time to time on the Radar.

Speaking of the top draft names, we’ve posted a question on the newyorkjets.com home page about which buzz-worthy draft candidate you want to hear most about from Indianapolis. We’ve only got room for four names so we may have left out your favorite top-of-the-draft pick.

But we will pop up a Jets-centric question early next week, and for that, let me ask for your help. Send me your comments on which player you’d like to see the Jets select on the opening night of the draft in a little over two months. I know some of the names, but maybe there’s a hot prospect you think is Green & White material in Round 1.

I’ll tally up the suggestions I get here on the Radar, and the top four names will go up in that question next week for all of the visitors to our site to vote on. Some 5,000 or more votes on those top four names will give us all a real good idea who the fans want to see in a Jets uniform this summer and fall.

For a preview of the combine, read Real Football’s advance to newyorkjets.com, which we posted a short while ago. Here is the interview schedule for players the rest of this week at the combine, just so you can be prepared for the reporting on your position of interest, whether it be here or on your favorite draft site:

Today — Offensive linemen, tight ends, kickers, punters, long-snappers

Friday — Quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers

Saturday — Defensive linemen, linebackers

Sunday — Defensive backs

Tomlinson Fan-Tastic in Front of the Camera

LT is smooth.

No, not on the field, not yet. LaDainian Tomlinson won’t be slicing effortlessly off tackle until the OTAs and veteran minicamp come around in a few months . But while he is still a humble man from Waco, Texas, he knows his way around in front of a camera. Asked this week by Rich Gentile, the Jets’ multimedia director behind the cam, to talk about what the Green & White fans will see out of No. 21 in the fall, he didn’t bat an eye.

"I think one thing I bring to the field is my passion. I really enjoy the game and have a heart for the game," Tomlinson said. "I think they’ll be able to see that and hopefully relate to that."

Before that, Tomlinson sat alongside Eric Allen, my newyorkjets.com partner, for a segment of Jets TV taped by Gentile and Chris Ubbens.

EA asked LT about the sales pitch the Jets made to get him to come here rather than any other team interested in his services. He mentioned his connection with coordinator Brian Schottenheimer, his QBs coach in San Diego for several years, then also appealed to Jets Nation again when he talked about his first visit to New Meadowlands Stadium during his visit with the team.

"That was one of the biggest things for me," he said of taking a look around the still-being-completed pigskin palace. "I just couldn’t believe the size of the place. I was kind of picturing myself being in the stadium and seeing all the Jets fans. They looked great. That was a selling point."

And at the end of the day, he added, coming to the Jets "really was a no-brainer for me."

As for the 15-carries workload that head coach Rex Ryan speculated about during the owners’ meeting in Orlando, Fla., last week, Tomlinson said that and a shot at another 1,000-yard rushing season sounded fine by him but was not what motivated him as he enters his 10th NFL season.

"The numbers are great but I’m not even worried about that part of it. To me it’s all about a championship," he said. "If I get the yards, great, but I’m going to do whatever I can to win a championship."

In short, Tomlinson knows all the right things to say and he means them when he says them. Asked to address Jets Nation directly, he looked unflinchingly into the lens and told everyone to "get ready. I’ve followed the Jets my whole career, from playing against them. You guys are the best fans. I look forward to entertaining you and hopefully we’ll have a lot of wins to cheer about."