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It’s Saturday and we’ve got some Jets’ Whispers. Tonight we have item on wide receiver Santonio Holmes and USO trips . . .
A couple of weeks ago, Holmes went on a USO tour to Germany.
As you know by now, when he came back, he asked to come out of practice. He felt he was getting too many reps. He might have tweaked his hamstring. The following week he was held out of practice due to a hammy.
I reached out to a former NFL player, who went on a USO trip while playing, to get his take on this Holmes scenario.
The former player defended Holmes.
“[A USO trip] does zap your energy with the travel, and of coarse the military approaches it much like an NFL team, meaning every waking minute they had Santonio, they were going to take advantage of it, to visit as many soldiers as they could,” the former player said. “I don’t know if Santonio knew what he was getting into, and now he gets killed for supposedly not being in shape. He probably was zapped and tried to do the right thing by showing up for practice, and then gets trashed. Maybe he should have skipped the practice when he got back.”
And because Holmes showed up at the OTA practice, the coaches weren’t necessarily going to factor in the USO trip, when deciding his workload. To them, it was business as usual. It’s not like were with him in Germany and cognizant of exactly what was going on over there.
“Nobody cares whether he’s tired or not,” said the former player. “It’s his job, he showed up when not required (OTA’s are voluntary), so go to work. Anything he says will be labeled as excuse making if he doesn’t perform. Nobody wants to hear about the labor pains, just deliver the baby!”
So this was the quintessential Catch-22 situation.
Holmes did the right thing not talking to the media at the mini-camp that took place a few days after “Rep-gate.”
I have said it before, and I’ll say it again – the less he talks to the media, the better.
He despises us. He did in Pittsburgh, and he does in New Jersey. He’s just not into us. Sometimes, I don’t blame him.
And because he enters almost every media session with a chip on his shoulder, they often don’t go well.
So if I’m the Jets, have him do the bare minimum.
Reporters were pissed at him at the mini-camp because they feel he lied to them.
On Tuesday, when approached by reporters, he said he wasn’t talking that day, but would on Wednesday.
And then he blew off the media on Wednesday.
Even a Jets official thought the media was a little naïve to act like that Wednesday promise was set in stone.
It was a good thing for the Jets that Holmes’ didn’t talk to the media this week, aside from obvious hatred of the press and the angst that causes.
You see, last week, after Holmes took himself out of the practice, he was asked by the press if he was injured, and he said, “no.”
This past week he was held out of mini-camp due to a hamstring issue.
Who knows how he would he handled this discrepancy. Not talking was the best approach.
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