Kenyon Sadiq was back participating in position drills for the first time in nearly a month on Monday afternoon after head coach Aaron Glenn provided a promising update about the rookie TE and CB D’Angelo Ponds.
“The plan is to get them out there as much as we can, but we have to make sure we do the right thing and make sure we don’t mess up anything as far as our plan to be ready for Week 1,” Glenn said.
Ponds missed all of training camp with a calf strain and has yet to practice. Sadiq participated in the first three practices of camp before suffering a setback in his recovery from offseason hernia surgery.
With the regular season rapidly approaching, what is realistic to expect from the rookies? Well, Glenn said it’s no different than any player coming back from injury.
“We cannot say, ‘OK, these guys are going to get 60 plays out there.’ We don’t want to do that,” Glenn said. “We want to make sure that we understand how many plays they can get, if those are 20, 25, whatever it is, to make sure that we manage them the right way to where they can build up to play a number of plays in the game.”
It’s about building stamina, and returning to practice is the first step for Sadiq and Ponds to eventually make their professional debuts.
The Standard
Aaron Glenn doesn’t need to clarify his standards for the Jets – the players are well aware.
“The expectations have been set by AG, by the coaches, by the leadership, is that we’re going to go out there, play physical football, we’re going to execute at a high level and we’re going to play our standard of football,” S Minkah Fitzpatrick said. “And I have confidence in knowing that we’re going to do that because that’s what we did during camp.”
And if anyone isn’t meeting those demands, they’ll be called out.
“It could be a coach, teammate, trainer,” Fitzpatrick said. “Everybody knows the standard that we’re trying to live up to.”