Tone Time returned early Sunday night.
Santonio Holmes just isn’t ready to say if it was simply a cameo appearance or the start of regular visits from his clutch alter ego.
Holmes enjoyed by far his best game of the young season in Sunday’s ugly 27-20 win over the Bills at MetLife Stadium, hauling in five catches for a career-high 154 yards and the game-winning 69-yard touchdown catch from Geno Smith with 9:23 remaining in the game.
It was the kind of play the former Super Bowl MVP was known to make — turning a game either side could win in his team’s favor with one big play — before suffering a severe Lisfranc foot injury in a Week 4 loss to the 49ers last year that cost him the rest of the season.
“It really felt good, man,” Holmes said while hosting the Fourth Annual Strikes for Sickle Cell fund-raising bowling event at Jersey Lanes in Linden, N.J. “It was an opportunity to help the team out as much as possible and to know you can still be counted on as one of the guys that can make plays for this team.”
Throughout training camp and even through three weeks of the regular season, Holmes has been cautious with his personal expectations. He continued with that approach Monday night.
“It’s only one game,” he said. “I still can’t get too high about it because I really don’t know. This is my first time coming off of an injury and the best way to play it is to take it day-by-day. I can’t put myself on a pedestal and say that I’m 100 percent because I’m not.
“Therefore I have to continue to play it one day at a time and continue to rebuild the process of something I built 28 years ago. To have it all taken away at one time is still a learning curve to get back in the same direction I was going in years ago.”
The circumstances of Monday night’s event were a 180-degree turn from last year, when an injured Holmes returned from his Florida home to host the charity event to raise money and awareness of sickle cell disease, a hereditary blood disorder. This year the event drew between 25 and 30 Jets players, an act of kindness and support Holmes said meant a great deal to him. Holmes’ son, Santonio III, suffers from the disease.
When asked directly about his big performance, he deflected the credit, to Smith, offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg, and his teammates — a selfless moment for a receiver who had been described as me-first in the past.
“It shows they’re really supporting me for the contributions I’ve made to get back on the field this year and also helping kids with sickle cell,” he said.