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Rookie wall talk might start pretty soon with Geno Smith. It generally starts kicking in during November.
Smith has been through so much physically for a a guy who just turned 23 – from mini-camp to training camp to preseason games (where he suffered an ankle injury) to half a season in the NFL.
And keep something in mind.
This is a player in dire need of an intensive off-season weight program.
I’ve seen him with his shirt off many times in the locker room. I don’t want that to sound weird, but just to provide analysis. When you are covering a team, you see players take off their shirts in the locker room.
The player looks like he hasn’t spent a lot of time in the weight room.
He’s very underdeveloped in the upper body.
I’m not saying you need to be J.J. Watt, but NFL quarterbacks do need to be workout warriors, and get themselves in great shape, with a certain degree of muscle mass to help their durability, at a physically taxing job.
Mark Sanchez took a lot of hits over his four years as a starter with the Jets, and he was able to stay on the field. Say whatever you want about Sanchez as a quarterback, but the guy was always in phenomenal shape.
You have to give Smith credit. He’s taken a lot of vicious hits this year, and he’s still ticking.
That is credit to his toughness and fortitude.
However, you just wonder how much more his body can take, especially since he really needs an intense off-season workout program to get bigger and stronger, and put himself in a better position to stave off injuries.
Right now, with his thin, underdeveloped upper body, it’s amazing how healthy he is.
But we need to keep an eye out for the rookie wall
It could be creeping up on him . . .
Speaking of conditioning, David Garrard isn’t in very good shape.
I walked past him today, and it just hit me, “Wow this guy needs to lose some pounds.”
He looked pudgy.
Hey, don’t listen to me, listen to Rex Ryan, who rarely says anything negative about any player.
“I think his conditioning isn’t to where we’d certainly like it to be eventually,” Ryan said on Wednesday about Garrard.
The Jets need him to get this rectified pretty soon.
They need to Garrard to be able to play if something happens to Geno Smith.
But one thing is clear about the guy – he can spin it, as they say in the world of football.
What an arm!
He can still make all the throws. He has a howitzer . . .
Late this afternoon, I saw Jets GM John Idzik and assistant GM Rod Graves going for a walk around the Jets’ complex.
Idzik and Graves are very close. Their roles were reversed in Arizona, where Graves was the GM, and Idzik assisted him.
John leans on Rod quite a bit.
Graves has been around the NFL for 30 years, and is like a really good bench coach in baseball, a good guy for the manager to lean on . . .
I asked Jeff Cumberland (hamstring) if he’s going to play on Sunday, and responded, “I’m good.”
He’s probable. Players listed as “probable” generally play.
I know I said this last week, and he ended up not playing that much, but I do expect a bigger role for Zach Sudfeld this week.
First of all, Konrad Reuland hyper-extended his knee in practice on Wednesday. He will play. Reuland said he felt a lot better today than he did yesterday, after a ton of treatment.
But just reading the tea leaves, I think the Jets are going to get Sudfeld more involved this week.
While Cumberland and Reuland are playing, you don’t want to over-play them, since they are both banged up.
And the Jets are a little thin at wide receiver, and the 6-7, 255-pound can help fill the void. At his size, with is 4.7 speed, he can create match-up problems.
October 25, 2013
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