CORTLAND — Rex Ryan’s recent suggestion that Jace Amaro get playing tips from old Mike Ditka game films got a chilly reception from the rookie tight end Monday.
“I’m not going back 30 years to see how Ditka played,” Amaro told The Post after finishing another day of training camp at SUNY Cortland. “I know the way he played and the kind of character he is.”
Ryan offered the suggestion last weekend, after Amaro caught two passes in the Jets’ preseason opener against the Colts. The Jets coach thought Amaro could have had two other receptions if he had been more aggressive.
“Give him tapes of Mike Ditka or something and say, ‘This is how we want you to play,’ ” Ryan said Saturday. “Recognize you’re a big guy. You need to be a bully out there. When that ball’s thrown up, you’ve got to go catch it. I don’t care where it is.”
Ditka was a Hall of Fame tight end for the Bears, Eagles and Cowboys, revolutionizing the position with his combination of toughness, receiving and blocking in an age when tight ends were little more than glorified linemen.
A second-round pick from Texas Tech, Amaro has endured a rough first NFL training camp, injuring his knee and suffering through some drop-filled practices.
Ryan thinks the 6-foot-5, 265-pound Amaro could be just as dominant as Ditka was, but Amaro said he has little use for comparisons.
“You don’t really want to look into it too much,” Amaro said. “You want to be your own player. You don’t want to [imitate] anyone else who has played. I want to be the guy who someone decades from now says, ‘That guy plays like Amaro.’ ”
Under fire for hoarding space under the salary cap, GM John Idzik said Monday reports that the Jets have $21 million in cap room “aren’t entirely accurate.”
If you want to nitpick, Idzik was right. The NFL Players Association keeps a running total — updated daily — of every team’s cap space on its website, and the Jets’ figure as of Monday afternoon was $21.116 million.
Ryan defended the Jets’ tightfisted spending by saying the NFL isn’t the same as Major League Baseball, which has no ceiling on player salaries.
“If you could spend like the Yankees, trust me, we would have an All-Star team,” Ryan said of Jets owner Woody Johnson. “Our owner would say, ‘All right, let’s go for it.’ There are fiscal responsibilities.”
Ryan said he isn’t strongly considering using Kyle Wilson as one of the outside cornerbacks after Dee Milliner, Dexter McDougle and Dimitri Patterson were injured in the past five days.
Wilson’s role will continue to be as a nickel corner, which Ryan said is the same as a starter now because NFL offenses use so many three- and four-receiver sets.
“In today’s game, he’s basically a starter,” Ryan said. “I think he’s coming on. I think Kyle’s playing extremely well.”