June minicamps are usually low-key affairs offering NFL teams one last chance to iron out various kinks before the real grind starts in six weeks.
Not this year’s Jets.
It’s only fitting HBO’s “Hard Knocks” is following Gang Green around this summer, because storm clouds and intrigue will be in heavy supply today when the Jets open a three-day mandatory minicamp in Florham Park that shifts to New Meadowlands Stadium for the finale Wednesday.
The storm clouds are all money-related as the Jets remain standoffish with four key players seeking contract extensions — Darrelle Revis, Nick Mangold, D’Brickashaw Ferguson and David Harris — while the front office struggles to unload more than 9,000 unsold PSLs and avoid local TV blackouts.
Although Revis said he would attend this week’s workouts, Mangold said last week that he might endure fines and skip the minicamp to protest the lack of any progress on an extension as he enters the final year of his deal.
The intrigue, meanwhile, will center on Mark Sanchez’s left knee and just how much coach Rex Ryan will let his young quarterback do in this camp just three months after surgery.
Ryan appeared to answer that question last week during the final session of organized team activities (OTAs), when Sanchez took part in 11-on-11 drills and even went through the final practice without the use of a knee brace.
“You don’t even worry about him — that’s how confident we are right now with where Mark is,” Ryan said after Thursday’s final OTA.
So it appears Sanchez will get his wish to participate in all of the minicamp, although Ryan hasn’t fully committed to that with the health of his franchise passer at stake and the Jets with no clear-cut No. 2 until veteran Mark Brunell’s expected signing next month.
But will Mangold be snapping to Sanchez and the rest of the Jets’ quarterbacks this week? It didn’t sound like it judging from the veteran center’s comments last Thursday, when Mangold proclaimed himself “50-50” to attend minicamp.
“Going through training camp into the final year of my contract [without an extension] is not something I want to happen,” Mangold told The Post. “I mean, Leon Washington got hurt [in the final year of his deal last year], and now he’s not here anymore.”
A training-camp holdout is possible, too, and not just for Mangold.
Ferguson and Harris have said little about their money situations, but Revis — who wants to be the NFL’s highest-paid cornerback at no less than $16.3 million per year — isn’t ruling out his own training-camp boycott.
It all looms as a huge distraction to the Jets’ Super Bowl hopes after they reached the AFC title game last year, and owner Woody Johnson isn’t acting as if he’s in any hurry to fix it with new deals for what GM Mike Tannenbaum has labeled the “Core Four.”
“There are a lot of issues,” Tannenbaum admitted to The Post last week.
None of which seems to worry Ryan, who continues to talk up a team that was 9-7 last season but looks like one of the AFC’s elite to its ever-cocky coach.
“Oh my goodness, we’re ready to play,” Ryan said last week. “Literally, we could go play. We are so much further along than we were. I know we still have a long way to go and we start out 0-0, but last year we left from here and this year we’re leaving from this spot when we head to training camp. This team is ready to roll.”