CORTLAND — Quinton Coples raced toward the sideline chasing Geno Smith.
“You ain’t that fast! You ain’t that fast!” Coples screamed as he went step for step with the fleet-footed rookie quarterback early in training camp.
Coples showed two things on the play — his athleticism and his confidence. Both were not always there in Coples’ rookie season with the Jets last year. But in Year 2, Coples looks more the part.
“That comes with confidence when you know where the heck to line up,” defensive line coach Karl Dunbar said. “If you’ve got 45 defenses going in the first day and you’re a rookie, it kind of slows you down, but now he’s in a position where he’s acclimated to what we’re doing.”
Coples is learning a new position in this training camp. The Jets are asking him to play some outside linebacker along with the defensive tackle spot he played last season. That means standing up, learning to operate in space and some coverage responsibilities.
“It’s making sure you understand the outside linebacker spot and the defensive line spot as well,” Coples said of his biggest challenge. “I just mastered the D line, so now I’m moving outside linebacker and I have to master that as well. It’s been coming pretty good. At the end of the day, it’s working out.”
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Jets coach Rex Ryan gave Coples a wake-up call in May when he questioned Coples’ work ethic in the weight room. Coples got a call from a friend who told him what his coach said. The coach and player discussed it the next day, and Coples said there have been no problems.
“It was good. It was constructive criticism,” Coples said. “At the end of the day, we took care of it and we talked about it and moved forward.”
Ryan has said Coples is thinking too much in practice and that has slowed him some, but overall he has been happy with what he has seen from the player the Jets took with the 16th pick in the 2012 Draft.
“I think just knowing the pro game and working at a higher tempo. I see him doing it,” Ryan said. “We’ll give him a lot. He’s playing in, he’s playing outside, he’s doing a lot of different things. And you can’t do that if you don’t know what you’re doing, so I see that from him.
“Obviously he’s jumping out to everybody because you see the athleticism. I think that’s what jumps out at you. But I see the other things, too. I see he’s not making the mental mistakes. We’re challenging him mentally. We’ll say, ‘Oh, by the way, you play D-end right now,’ [and we] haven’t even gone over it with him. But he has to pay attention in the meetings and things like that. Again, I’ve been kind of impressed with him.”
Coples is down to 278 pounds from 290 to help him play linebacker. And he has been more vocal on the field, getting on his teammates if they miss an assignment.
“They’ve accepted me as being one of the leaders,” Coples said. “One of the things I took on was leadership. Now, I’ve got to make sure I bring that intensity to each and every day. As well as they’re holding me accountable, I’ve got to hold everybody else accountable, too.”
Dunbar said the Jets have given Coples more responsibility this season.
“He’s a great athlete,” Dunbar said. “Last year we tried to put him in just one mode where he was rushing. Now, this year with him being able to grasp the defense, you can move him outside … drop him in the flat, you can rush him. He understands what we want from him.”