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Tony’s O: ‘I’m Excited About the Possibilities’

It had been a while since reporters had heard from Tony Sparano, and so today the Jets’ new offensive coordinator checked in with “the beats” on a conference call. To give you an idea of how hard he’s pushing it already at the start of May, his call was scheduled to begin at 2:15 p.m. ET, but he wasn’t able to break out of his offensive meetings until after 2:50.

And when Sparano talks, people listen. It’s not because of what he says about his players because like Rex Ryan he generally speaks positively about the players he’s working with, and what he says behind those meeting room doors will stay there.

As he said when a writer said that the players have described his style as “no-nonsense” and how would he describe his approach to those players, he replied, “Non-nonsense, honestly.”

Expanding on that terse retort, Sparano said, “My approach has been to spend very little time talking about things that happened in the past and worry about what’s ahead for us. We know we have to improve, every one of us. I have to be a better coach. From the players’ standpoint, we all have to do the job there. My deal with the players now is that we have a handshake deal — I’m going to give you my best effort every single day, you can bet on that, and I expect the same from the players on this side of the football.”

As for particulars, Tony had plenty. Eric Allen, my partner, will have a news story about the favorite topic of the day, which was Mark Sanchez, Tim Tebow, even a dash of Greg McElroy, the Wildcat, improvement behind center, and managing the QB situation. I’ll give you a few of the other topics that Sparano handled with his typical informational tone provided with his Connecticut/Massachusetts lilt that, somehow sounded to me as if it had a little Chicago thrown in, although to my knowledge Tony S has never worked in the Windy City.

Offensive weapons in general — “Honestly, I’m very excited about it. One of the things I felt coming in here were just some of the outstanding parts here, I think Coach Ryan and Mike Tannenbaum have done a great job that way, in putting together some of the pieces here. Our tight ends, even some of the young players at the position, we’re anxious to see how they develop. The wide receivers, we’re anxious to see how Jeremy Kerley will come along, Tone and his ability out there, then you add a player like Stephen Hill to that group. I was part of drafting Pat Turner in Miami, so to see how he’s developed, a lot of these players have developed really well along the way. … I’m excited about the possibilities we have.”

Santonio Holmes’ skill set — “I think he has special ability. There’s an interesting take when you’ve been on the other sideline, in the other room preparing for the players the Jets have here right now, having to figure out how you’re going to handle Dustin Keller, Santonio Holmes, or the running game with Shonn Greene and that offensive line. I think this guy has really special ability. He can catch it and run with it. He makes the hard catches, the acrobatic catches. He works really hard at it. The guy wants the football. The thing I’ve noticed about Tone in my time being around this guy is that he’s a competitive guy. I like that. With the skill players, I just love that fact that those guys love to compete.”

Shonn Greene and the backfield — “I’ve been really, really impressed with Shonn. First of all from the mental standpoint, this guy’s excellent. He sees the field really well, he’s got a good understanding of what’s going on at that position. … Those guys have so many things to think about in terms of protections, the different run keys and so on. He’s working hard this offseason and I’m excited about what’s going on. We have a good group of young players. Joe McKnight I’m excited about, Bilal Powell, and John Conner, having a fullback go in and block you. This is an exciting group of players to work with.”

Wayne Hunter and the right tackle spot — “We obviously have a long time to go here before we get to opening day. Rex might’ve mentioned this before as well, but when I was in Miami, Wayne was coming up prior to the Jets re-signing him. We thought an awful lot about him and we wanted to bring him down there at that time. I had some history with him, I know his college line coach really well, I know what he’s thought of Wayne. Wayne has been tremendous here right now with us. So I’m excited about it, all those guys up front. It’s a good group with some good players up there and some good young players coming through as well.”

Sparano was also asked what he’s thought so far of working with Rex in the same complex rather than working against him on opposite sidelines.

“Honestly, it’s been tremendous,” he said. “I can’t thank Rex and Mike and Mr. Johnson for giving me this opportunity here. But getting a chance to work with him every day now, being around him every day — it’s contagious. … The way he coaches, Rex Coaches with a passion. He cares about his players, he wants to win so bad. You just want to be around people like that. For me, I wanted to be on a team where winning is the priority and there’s lot of passion and enthusiasm. That’s what I have here right now. So I love it. Rex has been great for me and I just want to be able to return the favor.”

There’s not a lot of controversy here, but there’s a sense that “No-Nonsense” Sparano has rolled up his sleeves and has gotten to work. He’s not going to tell you everything that’s going on, but we know he’s focused on the future, not the past. And his work will soon be on display, at the rookie and full-squad minicamps and for all to see in Cortland beginning in less than three months.

Mike, Rex, Joey Put a Bow on Draft Weekend

Mike Tannenbaum, Rex Ryan and Joey Clinkscales came downstairs from the war room one final time this draft weekend to share their thoughts with the Jets reporters still holding their draft vigil in the media wing of the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center.

No one knows better than Mike T of the perils of any draft and how it may or may not work out. But as he summed up for reporters and fans alike: “I do like what we got accomplished.”

The Jets made five picks today since Mike and Joey (minus Rex, plus Terry Bradway) made their last appearance. They did talk about those third-day picks, but questions naturally still involved those three studs drafted in the first three rounds.

“I’m going to be excited to see what these guys,” Tannenbaum said, referring to Rex and his coaches, “do with Quinton [Coples] week in, week out. Stephen Hill, he gives us something we haven’t had in terms of size and speed. Demario Davis, what we liked about him was that he’s a little bit different than what we have. He has speed that Bart [Scott] and David [Harris} don't have."

Ryan fielded a question about Hill, the Georgia Tech wideout, being considered a starting WR from day one. Rex didn't flinch, and his answer segued into an interesting discussion of what Coples' presence now means for the defensive line.

"Do I think Stephen Hill will start? Yes, I do," Ryan said. "I think anytime you draft a guy that high ... I used to tell [Ravens GM] Ozzie Newsome the same thing: ‘How are the teammates going to look at it?’ Well, they proved in college that’s why you had them there [on the board]. You had a vision for those players. That’s why you took them.”

And Ryan added, with Coples, the North Carolina DE, that’s what you’re looking at, too, a new starter in the front line of defense. And yet it’s not quite as cut and dry as that.

“It doesn’t mean this player or that player’s not going to start. There’s so many different roles, so many things they can start on, sub team, things like that. They’re all going to play significantly.”

The Coples introduction into the D-line rotation, for example, could impact Mike DeVito. Ryan acknowledged that, yet certainly sees DeVito in very important roles ahead.

“I can tell you this about Mike DeVito — he’s an outstanding football player, no question about it,” the coach said. “Some guys come in as free agents and are real success stories. Mike’s one of those players. I know he’s a tremendous player. But to explain his exact role, I really don’t feel I can do that right now.”

It’s all about the packages.

“Sione [Pouha]‘s in the middle, Kenrick [Ellis] is in the middle and all that. We do have unusual depth right now,” Ryan said. “We really have it set up where we can do a lot of things with those fronts. Quinton Coples, he’s not going to play 70 snaps a game for us, but he’s definitely going to have a huge role in our defense.

“I remember Bill Walsh would take nine defensive linemen to games. I’m not saying we only need seven offensive linemen, but you want to have guys that are fresh to rush the quarterback, ideally in the fourth quarter. I think the more of these guys you get, the better it is for your team. We’re excited to have all these guys, excited to have the depth we have.”

Another thing that excites Ryan is the Demario Davis deal. He went through the measurables and then added some intangibles of the ILB from Arkansas State.

“He’s a gifted athlete without question. And he’s a very mature young man, a leader in their locker room. He’s got a great presence about him,” Ryan said. “He reminded me of a young Bart Scott when he came in. You see a lot of the same qualities that Bart possesses. I just think it’s going to be great, Bart as a mentor for this young man. I think it’s an ideal situation to come in to with him and David. Nick Bellore I thought was a tremendous pickup for us last year and he’s been outstanding this year in the weightroom. And Josh Mauga. We’re as deep as we’ve ever been there at the inside linebacker position.”

Tannenbaum summed up today’s picks with a few observations that will be elaborated on in the coming weeks as these players arrive for next weekend’s rookie minicamp, get integrated into the veteran core for the mid-June full-squad minicamp and training camp beyond:

S Josh Bush: “We feel good about Josh. He’s going to come in and compete.”

RB Terrance Ganaway: “We feel good about him and about Robert Griffin, who were Baylor teammates. He’s a bigger back and we were looking for something different from the rest of the depth chart.”

Griffin: “He had a great visit. Rex and Joey and I, we like him a lot.”

S Antonio Allen: “We were pleasantly surprised we could get him where we did. He was very productive at South Carolina, very versatile.”

WR Jordan White: “He’s a great kid and we think he can come in and not only play but help us on special teams.” White returned punts his last two seasons at Western Michigan.

Clinkscales wasn’t called on much at this newser until the end, when the Jets’ vice president of college scouting was asked if, now that the draft is over, he can clear up those rumors about him leaving for the Oakland Raiders to work under new GM Reggie McKenzie, his former Tennessee Vols teammate back in the Eighties.

“I expect to be here,” Clinkscales said. “My job is talent evaluator. I understand where the connection comes in. Reggie and I played high school ball and college ball together. I’ve known Reggie forever. But this is where I started and this is where I intend on being.”

With First 3 Picks, Speed Is Added to the Mix

There have been and will continue to be a variety of opinions on the Jets’ first three selections of their 2012 draft. But one thing the draft triumvirate of GM Mike Tannenbaum, VP of college scouting Joey Clinkscales and senior personnel executive Terry Bradway stressed in their Draft Day 2 wrapup news conference late this evening was that the threesome provided a commodity the Jets need.

“One thing we did today and yesterday,” said Bradway, “was that we improved the speed of the team.”

“First of all, we wanted to get the best player available, stick to our board as much as possible,” said Clinkscales. “But I’m sure that was in our mind. We wanted to get faster. The league is getting faster, and it’s important for us to add that as well.”

North Carolina DE Quinton Coples put his get-the-quarterback 4.78-second speed on display at the NFL Combine in February. Hill has a rare combination of size and speed that enabled him to, well, not exactly boast but predict to Clinkscales that he would turn in a 40 time in the 4.3′s.

“In our interview at the combine, that’s exactly what he said,” said the Veep, “and he did it.”

And Demario Davis flashed anywhere from 4.5-4.6 speed at linebacker to help him flash to opposing ballcarriers, whether they’re heading into the hole of for the flanks, and then apply his strength and tackling skills to drop them in their tracks.

“I think we’re off to a good start,” said Tannenbaum. “We got Quinton on the first day, then Stephen Hill, we were excited about that. And we feel we improved the athleticism at the inside linebacker position. There’s other things we want to get done. We’ll see what happens. Not to manage expectations but Matt Slauson, a starter for us, we got in the sixth round.”

One position not addressed yet is the O-line. Mr. T was asked about that and replied:

“There’s a number of young players on our offensive line. Wayne Hunter’s back for another year and he’ll be competing for a position here, and there’s Caleb [Schlauderaff], Austin [Howard], Vlad [Ducasse]. We really did stick to our board, and at the time we took the highest-rated player on our board all three times.”

Asked to clarify his statement about Hunter competing for the RT position, T said, “I’d say Wayne’s our right tackle now. The offensive line we’ve said we’ll continue to monitor.”

And Vlad? “He’s at right tackle now, too. We’ll look at that once we get through the draft.”

One thing Tannenbaum assured, no surprise really: “I think our roster will continue to evolve. We’ll try to sign another veteran player here and there, depending on how tomorrow and on how the spring goes.”

Every rock, every day.

Draft Notes

With no fourth- and fifth-round picks now, the Jets will enter Saturday and the final day of the draft with five selections — three in the sixth round (Nos. 187, 202 and 203) and two in the seventh (Nos. 242 and 244). Assuming they use all five, they will have spent eight picks on players this year, the most in a draft since Tannenbaum, in his first draft as the Jets’ GM, used 10 picks.

Hill is only the fifth Georgia Tech player selected by the Jets in the draft. The last Yellow Jacket taken was also the Jacket taken highest by the Jets, DE Coleman Rudolph, who was grabbed with the 36th selection of the 1993 draft.

In case you didn’t catch this UNC trivia, Quinton Coples is only the seventh North Carolina player to be drafted by the Jets and the first first-round Tar Heel. The last time the Jets went to Chapel Hill for a Heel, they took two. In the 1997 draft they tabbed DT Rick Terry with the first pick of Round 2, the 31st selection overall, and two rounds later they tabbed “The Natural,” RB-KR Leon Johnson, in Round 4. One other popular Carolina player drafted by the Jets was LB Eddie Mason, a sixth-rounder in 1995.

Sweet 16 (?) in the Draft? Mendelsohn Monitoring

A busy night is ahead for all of us NFL fanatics as the 2012 Draft comes barreling toward us in a few hours. For me, I’ll officially kick off the night with an appearance with my partner, Eric Allen, at the top of this year ‘s Draft Web Show on newyorkjets.com. The show will start at 6 p.m. ET and wrap up with plenty of time for all to get refreshed, restocked and rehydrated before Commissioner Goodell takes the podium at Radio City around 8 p.m.

In fact, I’ll depart from the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center shortly after helping EA kick off the draft show and will then wend my way into the city and eventually end up at 51st and Sixth to take in the night’s proceedings, which should include meeting up with the Jets’ new first-round selection, whoever it is and wherever that choice is made, for some quality time in between his making stops at the draft headquarters and then down the street at the SNY studios.

Will the Jets spend that No. 16 pick? Who knows. We’ve heard the Jets might move up, might move back, might sit tight. If the Jets do spend the 16th selection, it will be only the third time they’ve used that pick on a player in their history.

The previous two Sweet 16s did well for the Green & White for a short while and have had good careers since their Jets days:

■ DE Hugh Douglas, who came to the Jets at No. 16 out of Central State in Ohio in 1995, left after the ’97 for the Eagles, and in all had a 10-year, 80-sack career and now is an ESPN talking head.

■ WR Santana Moss, No. 16 in 2001, who’s still going after playing his first 11 seasons for the Jets and Redskins and making 639 regular-season receptions combined. ‘Tana also holds the distinction (until perhaps Jeremy Kerley breaks it) of having the most recent punt-return touchdown for the Jets, on Jan. 15, 2005, in the playoff loss at Pittsburgh.

And the No. 16 the team had in 2000 only counts if you add an asterisk. The Jets parlayed that pick and their 48th choice in the ’00 draft and sent it to San Francisco for the 49ers’ 12th overall pick. With that choice they selected DE Shaun Ellis, who until last season was a longtime contributor to the defensive cause.

Keep Hangin’ In There, Steve

As always, reality intrudes into the Jets’ and the NFL’s world. Tonight when I take time out from draft developments, I’ll offer a quick prayer to Steve Mendelsohn as he follows the draft from his Dumont, N.J., home.

I detailed Steve’s battle with pancreatic cancer before the start of last season in a story on newyorkjets.com. The Jets’ frequency coordinator since 1999 had already beaten doctors’ prognoses that he had a year to live due to a lung sarcoid six years ago and three to five months to go from the cancer back in January 2011. His goal then was to make it to the Jets’ next playoff game. They didn’t get the postseason, of course, but Mendelsohn and his extended green family did go into the offseason together.

Steve was sent home from the hospital last week with a new prognosis of two to six weeks to live. He admitted to me that he was pretty down last Friday. But a list of Jets visiting his home this week, led by general manager Mike Tannenbaum and head coach Rex Ryan, has reinflated his spirits. His new goal: to attend one of the Jets’ early OTA practices the week after next.

“The GM made the request that I come out and have lunch then,” Steve said. “God has made my life plentiful these last weeks. I don’t take bad news easily when I know I can overcome it. So I’m coming out. Whatever it takes.”

Have a great draft tonight, Steve, and we’ll see you here soon.

McElroy, Posey Do the Honors

QB Greg McElroy and DB Julian Posey will team up with the N.J. Department of Agriculture to honor Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood on Friday morning for being one of the winning schools in the 2011-12 “Eat Right, Move More” contest. The program encourages Garden State schoolkids to take advantage of healthy foods in their school cafeterias and become more active.

Landry: Signing with Jets ‘the Right Thing to Do’

It must be dizzying, to be an NFL free agent having just signed on the dotted line with a different team than the one you broke into the pro game with five years before. New faces, new home office, new part of the country.

Yet LaRon Landry looked as comfy in his molded plastic office chair in a meeting room at the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center on Monday as if he were stretched out in his Barcalounger back in Virginia.

“This feels like home,” Landry, the former Redskins safety, told me within hours of signing a deal to join the Jets and patrol the deep middle of their offense this coming season. “This was the right thing to do.”

Landry knew a little bit of what to expect, and for that he and the Jets can thank his brother, Dawan.

“Dawan’s older by two years … I’m the better one,” he said with a proud sibling’s smile. “Rex Ryan and Dennis Thurman were coaching my brother in Baltimore. He said they were players’ coaches, they’re about winning.

“But ultimately it was my decision to make. I had to come out here and see for myself. It’s a nice facility. The Jets have a great owner and a great coach. It’s home here. I’m glad to be playing in a defense where my ability will be used to help my teammates. I’m all about winning, too.”

Landry exudes football, muscularity and competitiveness. He’s a friendly guy with a strong handshake and an edge to him that hints at his hard-hitting reputation that he brought with him from LSU as the Redskins’ sixth pick of the 2007 draft.

I asked him what number he’d be wearing as a Jet.

“I’ve always been 30,” he said. ” ‘Dirty 30.’ That’s what I’ve been since my freshman year in college.”

Dirty in a good way, though, I suggested.

“Yeah, dirty in a good way,” he agreed.

The Jets and their fans are eager to have a new safety to help clean things up when the Green & White go up against the top tight ends, in particular the Patriots’ Rob Gronkowski/Aaron Hernandez tag team. Landry is well aware of that aspect of his new home office.

“I like a challenge. I like being physical,” he said. “With that said, you know about the tight end situation the Patriots can bring with their mismatch. I’m up for it. It’s all football. The lines on the field don’t change. The grass — well, the grass and FieldTurf don’t change.”

Another part of football is that sometimes elusive perfect health. Football watchers clucked over Landry’s last two seasons with Washington. After three years of missing only one start and ascending to the top of some independent ratings groups among NFL safeties, he played in barely half of the ‘Skins games in ’10-11 due, it was said, to a problem Achilles tendon.

Landry corrected that misunderstanding for any concerned fans and reporters.

“The Achilles was a significant injury the year before last,” he said. “Last year it was a bone injury in my heel instead of the Achilles. They thought it was the same injury as the year before but it was a misdiagnosis type of deal.

“I feel great. I’m fine. If it was an issue, if it was something that couldn’t be corrected, I wouldn’t be here.”

That being said, GM Mike Tannenbaum talked with reporters this afternoon on a conference call and said there’s still medical and training work for Landry and the Jets’ teams to do this offseason.

“We’ll be intelligent in our approach. We don’t want to put any limits on LaRon,” Mike T said. “We’ll be smart about it and work with him to make sure he’s ready to go on opening day.”

Landry is an interesting dude. Redskins fans were well aware of his pet, a white-faced Capuchin monkey he named Gucci. And he’s into Twitter, recently passing 40,000 followers on his page under the nom de tweet of @MrLandry30. On his page you can read some of his football aphorisms and follow exchanges with his fans, some of them friendly and some more of the sparring variety. It’s all about the edge.

“It’s about me playing with passion. Passion comes with attitude,” he said. “Being a Jet, they will get everything out of me. I’m a passionate player.”

On the Airwaves

Sorry for the late notice but three Jets will be doing interviews on New York radio stations this afternoon. Tannenbaum will be on ESPN 1050 at 3:30 p.m. ET, Landry will come in right behind Mr. T at 3:45 on ESPN 1050, and Mark Sanchez is scheduled for 5:40 p.m. on WFAN 660.

BT Expresses His Passion for the Green & White

“It feels great to be back.”

How many times have we heard a pro athlete mouth those words? How many times have we doubted that athlete’s sincerity?

There’s no doubting Thomas. Bryan Thomas, that is. BT signed his new contract today at the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center, a day after the OLB and the Jets agreed in principle that he would return for his 11th season. Then he strolled through the second floor — which contains GM Mike Tannenbaum’s office but also the business offices that some players don’t even know exist. And he proceeded to kibitz with the folks up here on his way to an on-camera interview with Eric Allen and Jets TV and an off-camera chat with newyorkjets.com.

One way we could tell Thomas was happy to be back in the fold was that he was visible. That was not his state for the final 13 weeks of the past season as he was grinding away off the radar, rehabbing his torn Achilles tendon — the first injury of any severity of his football career.

“Every day I would come in and I didn’t want to to be a distraction to the players,” he said. “I’d wait till they’d go to their meetings, then come in and focus on getting better. Once in a while, I’d come into the locker room and a lot of the players would say, ‘Hey, BT, we haven’t seen you for a while.’

“It was tough. I love my job. I have a passion for it. And when you’re watching it on TV and not out there contributing, you really, really have a passion for it. I missed the guys in the locker room, the camaraderie.”

Now he’s back, officially able to continue his rehab. He says the Achilles feels good after all the work he and John Mellody and his training staff have put into it. He’s into his third week of running. And he’s never been as fond of blocking dummies as he is now as he starts to cut and move around those obstacles again with an eye toward being ready to rock again when all the Jets vets report for the start of the offseason conditioning program the second half of April, the OTAs in May and the veterans minicamp in June.

Technically, he was an unrestricted free agent for a few minutes after 4 p.m. Tuesday, before the announcement came out of the football office that he and the Jets had agreed on a new deal. We asked him today if he had thought for those few minutes about actually jumping into the free agency waters and talking with some other teams.

The often fun-loving BT gave us as stern a visage as he could muster.

“It wasn’t even an option,” he said. “This organization has been really good to me. I wanted to show them that no other team matters but the Green & White. When they told me they wanted me to be back, I told them I wanted to be back and pretty much nothing else mattered.”

Now he resumes the wearing of that gray mantle, the one that declares him “the longest-tenured Jet” with Season No. 11 approaching, and he’s happy to do it, albeit while flashing a sheepish smile.

“Vinny Testaverde, Curtis Martin, Jason Ferguson — these guys were the vets when I came into the league. They helped school me to the game,” he said. “That’s what I want to do with our young guys, show them the ins and outs of the game.”

There’s something to be said for making a big splash in free agency. But it’s also important to identify some of the key players that you want to stay around, who can still help you win games and reach playoffs. Thomas has never been the pass-rushing demon that everyone wanted with the 22nd pick of the 2002 draft. But he’s become a versatile, solid veteran who as Mike T said yesterday can help a team in a number of roles. And that team for one more year is the Jets.

“I’ve already had my offseason,” BT said. “I’m focused and I’m healthy. It’s really great to be back.”

‘Old School’ Prophett Ready to Rock into Free Agency

In just a few moments, the NFL’s League Year will begin. The Jets’ preparations for free agency and the trading period trace all the way back to the summer.

“It’s a process that begins all the way back in August,” Jets director of player personnel Brendan Prophett told newyorkjets.com. “We delegate within the department which teams guys will cover. They’ll be responsible for writing up that’s team’s players throughout the season.”

Prophett, in his 13th season with the Jets, and the entire scouting staff assembled together in the winter to assess what the Jets were and where they were going.

“We really start gearing our focus towards free agency prep in the game plan meeting that we usually have as a personnel department as a whole in December, where it’s pro personnel, college scouting and Mike T,” he said. “We kind of take a self-analysis and look at ourselves, where we would potentially have needs, what’s available from the pro side — unrestricted and restricted free agency. And the college guys have been out on the road all fall, so they’ll have their reports on guys at each position and then we kind of put it into categories.”

At that time, the Jets analyzed their positional groups and assigned them one of three categories.

“These are our must areas that we have to fill, our needs where we would like to fill, and a nice to have, so you kind of mark it in those different categories,” he said. “And then once the season ends, our whole focus in pro personnel goes right to free agency.”

The Jets wrote up reports on every player who potentially could move to the open market. Once the season ended, the coaches were brought up to speed and incorporated into the process.

“We’ll spend January writing up all the free agents — and you’re talking 500-plus free agents this year, restricted and unrestricted,” Proph said. “And we’ll kind of drill down to identifying those positions that are musts and needs.

“Based upon our grades, there is a collection of players at those positions that we’ll want the coaches’ input. It’s really important that we have good dialogue with the coaches — what are we looking for, the positions’ requirements that the coaches have, and what their visions are for the players at those positions. We’ll come to them with a list of guys and here are the guys that we think fit those requirements and we want their feedback to see if they share that same vision.”

Money is an important factor as well, considering the NFL has a salary cap. The Green & White have reportedly created more cap space this spring with the extensions of QB Mark Sanchez and NT Sione Pouha. Most media outlets estimate New York’s AFC representative is about $14 million under the league’s cap of $120.6 million. GM Mike Tannenbaum has a talented football administration department in place in director Ari Nissim and manger Jacqueline Davidson, and they play key roles in the spring.

“We grade the players as football players and Ari and Jackie do a great job of kind of gauging based upon our grade where that will fit financially. Obviously we want to acquire as many good players as we can, but financially sometimes we can’t feasibly make it work,” Prophett said. “They’ll give us parameters, ‘Hey, we think we can work within this pay structure. Who are kind of the players who fit that mold?’ We have conversations with them like we do the coaching staff, ‘What group of players fits this market or this kind of financial parameter?’ We’re in constant contact with them.”

At 4 p.m. ET today, the Jets will have only two safeties on their roster as both Jim Leonhard and Brodney Pool are unrestricted free agents. Three teams used their franchise tags on safeties (OAK on Tyvon Branch, SF on Dashon Goldson and TEN on Michael Griffin) so LaRon Landry is now widely considered the top safety on the market.

“I think it’s a good group. There is a lot of depth there,” Prophett said. “Obviously we’ll look to see if we want starters, backups. What’s available in terms of those guys? You’ll look at your own guys and there’ll be some dialogue there as to whether we want to keep them or not and we’ll be in contact with them.

“But when you look to the market, I think there’s quality depth. When you look at the guys that have been tagged — the Goldsons, the Branches — those are excellent players, but we still think there are numbers there that we can get a good player.”

There are openings at OLB and No. 2 receiver as well. Both Bryan Thomas, the longest-tenured Jet who got a light workout in here today before the deadline, and WR Plaxico Burress, who tied for the team lead with eight TDs in 2011, are unrestricted free agents.

“They’re not under contract, so they’re talking to other teams. Obviously we’ve had some dialogue with them throughout the offseason leading up to free agency, so we both share a feel for where the other is at, but they’re looking and so are we,” Prophett said. “We’ll come up with what we feel is the best answer for the Jets moving forward.”

A product of The College of New Jersey, Prophett played wideout at TCNJ and was a three-time all-conference selection. He got some pro experience in Europe, and Arena ball also appeared on his résumé before he began to flourish in his current role.

“Brendan has been invaluable,” said assistant GM Scott Cohen. “He has been as thorough, as detailed and as good an evaluator as I’ve been around. We work hand in hand with everything we do and I couldn’t think of a better person to share those duties with.”

Prophett is excited to get going once again in a more traditional format. A long work stoppage a year ago forced teams to scramble last summer in a unique condensed free agency period.

“It’s good that you can get the players in, talk to them and you can get a feel for what he wants, what you guys are looking for — get a feel for one another, basically,” Prophett said. “It’s a recruiting process. You really didn’t have that last year. There really wasn’t time for it. I’m an old-school guy, I like the traditional, so I’ll welcome kind of the back-to-norm approach we’ll have this year.”

Mike T and His Team Roll Up Sleeves at Combine

This February afternoon is almost over in the middle of America and the Jets — along with each of the 31 other NFL clubs — are engrossed in their draft preparations at the NFL Combine workouts.

“It’s just the next step in the process,” GM Mike Tannenbaum told me inside Lucas Oil Stadium. “Our area scouts and [senior personnel executive] Terry Bradway and [VP of college scouting] Joey Clinkscales do a great job in the fall, and we’re just kind of adding to that now. We saw them down in Mobile at the Senior Bowl, we get to see them work out here, and the interviews are really important. It’s just the next step in the process.”

While many of the Jets coaches and scouts are here at Lucas Oil during daylight hours, the team personnel move down the street to an Indianapolis hotel and interview selected prospects at night. Each team is permitted to interview 60 players over the course of the combine and each session has a 15-minute time limit.

What are the Jets looking for from the prospects?

“A lot of their football acumen — some of them really separate themselves quite a bit,” Mr. T. said. “You know which guys have a better feel for their responsibilities than others and our coaches do a great job. We’re looking forward to that getting started in a couple of hours here.”

Tannenbaum and the Jets don’t rehearse their interview approach. They listen first and then see where the interview goes from there.

“It just develops as a guy comes in there, but we have the position coach leading the discussion,” he said. “We’re sitting there observing them and seeing how they answer the questions.”

A loyal boss, Tannenbaum has a scouting staff that he both trusts and respects. Area scouts have mined the country since the final selection of the 2011 draft symbolized both a conclusion and a beginning.

“They’re tireless workers, the Matt Bazirgans of the world, the Jeff Bauers, the Jay Mandolesis. They’re great, they care, they work hard,” Mr. T. said. “Joe Bommarito, Jim Cochran, Mike Davis — they all do great jobs. We’re lucky they’re here and they have such passion. Sometimes they have to watch our games listening to the radio or on the Internet, but the wins and losses mean as much to them as anyone.”

Inside a stadium suite today, the stopwatches were out and pens and papers scribbled in notebooks. There wasn’t much conversation as the Jets observed drills that will be weighted, but the gametape never lies.

“Those are interesting and they’re great for comparison purposes, but at the end of the day it’s how do they play football,” Tannenbaum said of drills such as the 40-yard dash, benchpress and shuttle run. “Rex is a natural evaluator. His input has been great. He really works at it — he watches a lot of tape. Again this is important, but it’s just another step in the process.”

During Thursday’s meeting with the media, Tannenbaum reiterated his belief that Mark Sanchez and Santonio Holmes will be able to thrive as teammates once again. Barring something unforeseen, the Jets starting QB and No. 1 wideout will remain unchanged on the depth chart.

“The fact that they’ve played well as Jets together under this coaching staff gives me every reason to believe that an issue that came up last year is very solvable,” he said.

Tannenbaum’s core belief is he’ll look under every rock every day to get better. The Jets are in need of safety help with both Jim Leonhard and Brodney Pool set to become unrestricted free agents on March 13, but there are multiple ways of addressing voids.

“I look at any position as a big continuum,” the GM said. “We’ll look at potential trades, potential signings in free agency, the draft, claiming guys on Labor Day.”

Tannenbaum chose not to make public if he would consider a franchise tag for NT Sione Pouha, but he would like the veteran lineman to remain with the Green & White in 2012.

“Within reason we’re going to do everything we can to keep him,” he said.

This spring’s labor harmony means a return to free agency preceding the draft. The Jets currently own choices in every round and should be in position to obtain one or more compensatory selections, but trading up is always an option for Tannenbaum.

“I do believe in quality over quantity,” he said. “That’s just based on a lot of research and what’s a replaceable part and what the odds are of success in every round.”

The search to get better is a never-ending for Tannenbaum and his crew.

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

Sparano on Conference Call: ‘I’m a Show-Me Guy’

Jets fans got to know a little about Tony Sparano while the Green & White were getting ready to play Sparano’s Aqua & Coral twice a year from 2008 through this season’s first meeting at MetLife Stadium in October. He has a touch of the Northeast and “Tony Soprano” about him, a skilled yet blue-collar approach to the game that obviously appealed to Bill Parcells, another quintessential Nor’easter who brought him over from Dallas to be the ‘Fins’ head coach.

So dealing with any alleged Jets “hornet’s nest” is not going to faze the Jets’ new offensive coordinator.

“Contrary to popular belief, I really don’t read a whole lot about what’s said or hear about what’s said,” Sparano said on a conference call with reporters this afternoon. “I’m kind of a show-me guy. Anybody who’s played for me a lot knows I use that phrase — it’s a show-me business, it’s a show-me game.

“Once the players get here, it’s a blank piece of paper. That’s a positive. Sometimes change is good. This situation here is a blank piece of paper, we’ll go from here, we’ll get a chance to learn each other, they’ll get a chance to know me. I’m looking forward to working with these players.”

One player in particular concerns all of Jets nation and that’s the relationship moving forward between Sparano and QB Mark Sanchez.

“Obviously I have some experience because I was on the other sideline against the Jets here,” he said. “Having to prepare for Mark Sanchez was always difficult First of all, he’s athletic. He has a good release. He can make all the throws. He can get out of trouble. … That was a handful, having to prepare for him. I’m happy to be with him now.”

That of course doesn’t mean there aren’t things that Sparano, the Cowboys’ offensive playcaller in 2006 and one of the first proponents of the emergence of the Wildcat in NFL offenses, doesn’t want to work on with the Jets’ now fourth-year field general. But he declined to go into too many specifics “early on in this process.”

“One of the things every offseason you need to do with the quarterbacks is to get them back to square one, break them back from a fundamental standpoint. Games get on you really fast and you don’t have the amount of time you think you have. Now you get a chance to break them back fundamentally and do some of those things you think would be good, stress some of those scenarios that go into the game — clock management, you can turn the ball over a lot of ways in our league.

“We’ll look at turnovers, spend a lot of time with Mark and get going, when we can spend time with him.”

Naturally, the rules are different this year following the new labor agreement last summer. Players can show up anytime at their complexes, but teams can’t require players to begin offseason programs until mid-April. Whenever the new OC and the now veteran QB can sit down, though, they’ll be discussing philosophy.

“I want to have an identity here on offense,” Sparano said. “I want our players to be able to walk into the meeting room and not be surprised with things that are going to be in the game plan every week. I do believe in moving the ball downfield, advancing in chunks. If you can’t get 20 yards in our league, that makes it hard to move the football.”

The Jets had those issues in their 16 games that ended so disappointingly in an 8-8 record. For only the second time in franchise history, they had no completions of 40 yards or longer to a wide receiver. (TE Dustin Keller had a 41-yard catch and LaDainian Tomlinson went 74 yards with a screen.) Shonn Greene’s 31-yard run vs. Kansas City was the shortest “long run” in a season since 1995.

So hearing about an emphasis on “chunk yardage” should be heartening to Jets Nation. But something else will sound familiar, and that’s the emphasis on physical play and the running game.

“Being physical doesn’t mean you’re going to run the ball 55 times a game,” Sparano said. “It means you’re going to protect the quarterback, the attitude of the receivers and their approach. It also comes from the quarterback. I like a physical mentality. We’ll be explosive, we’ll be able to get it downfield, do all those things. But I learned a lesson a long time ago about how you win and lose in this league. You’ve got to have some element of running the football.”

Especially, as head coach Rex Ryan reminded during his and GM Mike Tannenbaum’s portion of the conference call, with the Jets residing in, well, the Northeast. And that’s something else that has enabled Sparano, who grew up in West Haven, Conn., and went to college at New Haven, to feel right at home.

He was relieved of his Dolphins command with three games to go this season, so he spent that with his family and being an uncomfortable watcher of games that he was no longer directly involved in.

“Once the season ended, then all of a sudden the phone started to ring and I was able to start to entertain some of these things,” he said of the short, whirlwind process that led to him accepting the Jets OC job on Wednesday after Brian Schottenheimer through mutual agreement had vacated the day before.

“This opportunity came about to meet with Mike Tannenbaum and with Rex, the opportunity to meet with Mr. Johnson, to speak with them and see just how passionate they are about this organization and what’s happening here right now. Once I got through all that, there was no question for me. I share a lot of the same philosophies that Rex shares. This is home for me. I’m just happy to be a part of this team here. I’m looking forward to it.”