NFL

Jets vow to be true team this season

The Jets have spent the past five months putting the 2011 season behind them, and now the 2012 season is nearly upon them.

The Jets broke mini-camp yesterday confident the chemistry issues that plagued the team last year are done with.

“I don’t know how many wins we’ll have, but I know we’ll have that [problem] corrected,” coach Rex Ryan said. “We will have a close football team. We’re not going to beat ourselves with some of the in-fighting or all that other stuff. That’s a thing of the past.”

As is the offseason. With their final mini-camp practice yesterday, the Jets said goodbye to a crazy offseason that began with players sniping at each other, followed by the hiring of new offensive coordinator Tony Sparano and, of course, the trade for Tim Tebow.

“I’m excited about where this team is,” Ryan said. “I really am. Anytime you put in a brand-new offense, I’m excited about how far we’ve come. All the formations changed, everything, the motion, the tempo and the verbiage … are we there yet? No, but we made strides.”

The focus from the outside during the offseason program has been on the quarterbacks: Tebow and Mark Sanchez. It seems like 90 percent of the questions asked by reporters centered around those two. There is only going to be more scrutiny in six weeks when training camp opens in Cortland, N.Y.

Sanchez finished with a thud yesterday, completing just 1-of-10 passes with a sack in team drills. Tebow, who went 3-for-4, did not run any Wildcat plays during the time the media was permitted to watch practice this spring.

The focus inside the locker room was not on the quarterbacks, but on installing a new offense and improving on defense. Sparano brought his run-heavy attack with him and rode the players in practice with his voice that could be still heard in Miami, where he was head coach from 2008-11.

“I was thinking today, sometimes you hear coaches say something, and you’re like, ‘Whatever. They’re just saying it because they’re coaches,’ ” guard Brandon Moore said. “On my own, I felt like we accomplished a lot, made a lot of strides, nowhere near where we need to be, but we accomplished a lot in the time we had.”

The defense of Ryan and Mike Pettine did not change as drastically as the offense, but underwent a facelift of its own. Pettine stressed speed in the offseason program and players, most notably linebacker Bart Scott, came back slimmer and quicker.

The Jets also have shifted to using more four-man fronts with first-round pick Quinton Coples allowing Pettine to do different things with the defense. All spring long, the Jets have been lining up with four down linemen, something the 3-4 team had done less of in years past.

Pettine was asked if he believes the Jets will use more four-man lines than three-man this year.

“We will,” he said without hesitation. “Even in base defense or nickel, I see us being in more four-down groupings. We feel like we have two pretty good bookends in Quinton and [Muhammad Wilkerson] and we have a pretty good rotation of guys inside.”

The defense believes it can get back to its 2009 form, when it was No. 1 in the NFL. It dropped to No. 5 last year.

“I think we’re going to be a force to be reckoned with this season,” linebacker David Harris said. “Guys out there are flying around, having fun. We probably had the least amount of mental errors in practice this OTAs and mini-camp than ever before.”

* Defensive tackle Kenrick Ellis reports to a Virginia jail today to begin serving a 45-day sentence after entering an Alford plea last month to an assault and battery charge stemming from a 2010 incident. Ellis did not want to discuss his legal situation yesterday. … Wide receivers Santonio Holmes and Stephen Hill both sat out team drills for the third day of mini-camp with hamstring injuries. Holmes did not speak to the media during mini-camp, in violation of league policy.