The Jets players, coaches and support staff convened for a 7 a.m. breakfast yesterday at SUNY Cortland before breaking training camp and driving home to prepare for their second preseason game, Monday night in Baltimore.
This ended their three-week stay in the rural upstate New York college town.
Rex Ryan, who surprised the players by canceling yesterday’s practice and allowing everyone to go home early, seemingly has gotten the desired results by taking his players more than three hours from home so they could bond and grow together as a team as they prepared for the season.
Two prominent questions come out of this experimental training camp project after the team had spent the last 40 years training at Hofstra:
How will translate in terms of wins and losses for the Jets?
And, will they return next summer?
Both questions will remain unanswered for the time being.
Certainly, if the Jets get off to a good start — say, winning three of their first four games — and put together a solid season that ends up in the playoffs, you can bet your Joe Namath jersey they will return to Cortland.
Nevertheless, the Jets have a tough start to the season — at Houston, home games against the Patriots and Titans and a road game in New Orleans.
A 3-1 start might be a lot to ask for, particularly while playing perhaps with a rookie starting QB and a new coaching staff with a new defensive system.
Two things that are certain about this summer camp trip for the Jets:
Cortland, which embraced them from start to finish, desperately wants them back.
And the Jets loved their stay there, despite being away from family and friends for three weeks.
“I think that the bond that we formed here in August will help us win some of the close games in November and December,” Kellen Clemens said.
That was Ryan’s ultimate goal to making this move.
“I would like to do more training camps here, because I have a tough time believing that wherever we go is going to be much better than Cortland,” Ryan said. “Our time has been outstanding here. I know sometimes the particulars of it, whether it’s financial or whatever, there’s a lot more into it than my opinion.
“My opinion is certainly that we accomplished everything we wanted to here and we had the facilities to do it. We had great support from the people of Cortland, and I just think it was a great place to have camp.”
From the tone of Ryan’s practices — mostly enthusiastic and energetic, which is hard to do in training camp sometimes — as well as the bonding the players accomplished with each other, it seems Ryan’s plan was a success.
“I think that was good on Rex’s part and the coaching staff’s part to come out here just as a way to bond as a team,” cornerback Darrelle Revis said. “You see a DB hanging out with an offensive lineman, which usually doesn’t happen, or a quarterback hanging with a defensive back. So it’s good for us to get that bond and trusting each other so when the season comes along the guys have confidence in the guy next to them.”
Clemens said he believes this experience brought the team close together.
“You have a chance to talk about football, but you also have a chance to talk about other life experiences and really get to know your teammates,” Clemens said. “There were a couple of occasions where 15 to 20 of us went out and had dinner together.”
Tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson said, “I don’t think you have a choice but to bond. Team bonding is definitely what has been accomplished here. Training camp is always hard, but I think when you’re put in a different atmosphere that you’re not normally used to, you focus and rely on each other even that much more.”
Center Nick Mangold, for one, didn’t even want to think about next year’s training camp.
“Shoot, we have 16 regular-season games to go and then whatever else we can put behind that,” he said. “Next year’s training camp is way off in people’s minds. We’ve got a lot to do before then.”