If you were running on the treadmill at a New Jersey hotel this week, you might have seen a funny sight.
A group of Jets offensive rookies gathered Thursday night in the fitness center at their hotel to hold a walk-through as they tried to learn the playbook for the team’s rookie minicamp. The skill players decided rather than studying in their rooms separately, they should get together and work. The only problem was finding a space.
So, they decided to line up between the hotel’s ellipticals and stationary bikes.
“We had some space issues doing the walk-through in the weight room,” quarterback Cade Klubnik said. “We’re running about three-yard routes, but it’s better than nothing.”
The rookies found a ballroom they could use Friday and they were able to run a few deeper routes.
It showed initiative by this group that is led by Klubnick, and first-round picks Kenyon Sadiq and Omar Cooper Jr.
“That was just players getting together, wanting to be successful,” Cooper said.
Klubnik said the players official meetings ended at 7 or 8 each night and then they gathered for these impromptu sessions at 9.
“We want to make sure that we’re clean when we get out there,” Klubnik said. “We’re all studying in our rooms by ourselves anyway. We’re up until 10 or 11 o’clock studying and making sure we have all our notes down and making sure we’re clean when we get to the next day. I want Omar to go have the best day he can have. And I want him to be clean and confident, to go run the best routes he has and not have to be thinking a lot. When I’m out there, I don’t want to be thinking about a million different things. I’m going to. But as much as I can be locked in on what my job is and I want our team to be able to go execute. So a few of us just got together, nothing special, just kind of walked through some of the stuff, just a little bit extra.”
The Jets give the rookies a scaled-down version of their playbook for minicamp, but Klubnik said it is still about 70 pages.
It’s a lot to digest in a short amount of time. The Jets rookies found a way to get some extra study time in together and draw some strange looks from fellow hotel guests along the way.
