Kyle Wilson is not Vernon Gholston.
After a rookie season in which the Jets cornerback struggled to meet the heightened expectations that came with being a first-round pick, Wilson, unlike the released Gholston, appears to be molding into the player the team thought it was drafting with last year’s 29th overall pick.
“He’s having a great camp,” Mark Sanchez said of Wilson yesterday in Florham Park. “He’s a first-round pick. He’s supposed to be a stud. We saw flashes of it last year and now he’s starting to be more consistent.”
Replaced as the team’s third cornerback by Drew Coleman early last season, Wilson has regained the spot with Coleman’s departure to Jacksonville and is eager to contribute to the loaded Jets secondary in the manner he knows he’s capable.
“Everything from last year, you get to do it all over again and that’s the beauty of the game,” Wilson told The Post. “I feel a lot better and definitely have a better understanding of how things work. I want to be great, so I expect [bigger] expectations. I’ve worked harder to be a consistent force out there.”
While Sanchez already endures difficult practices, throwing against Darrelle Revis and Antonio Cromartie, the third-year quarterback now has to account for someone he admits he used to take advantage of.
“Before you could try and pick on Kyle and understand exactly what they’re doing on defense and he’d kind of give it away,” Sanchez said. “[It’d be] obvious he’s coming on the blitz, so we’d adjust the protection and you’d send [tackle] Wayne Hunter out there and he’d just knock him over. That’s what happens your rookie year. Now, he’s moving all over the place so it makes it a lot more difficult. He’s come through a couple times clean and totally fooled us.”
During a play in practice yesterday, Wilson was matched up with Santonio Holmes in the slot. Just before Sanchez snapped the ball, Wilson left the receiver and faked a blitz, causing the offense to hesitate, resulting in a false start. The 24-year-old clapped a few times, said a quick word to his teammates and immediately lined back up for the next rep. He’s learning quickly.
“The big thing I did last year was take notes on everything,” Wilson said. “I have to know what’s going on. You have to know it like the back of your hand. That’s one thing in the offseason I did, studying up the playbook and the terminology, really all the ins and outs of all the coverages, what this is for and what we want it to look like, understanding it at another level.”
Sanchez said he noticed a difference at the beginning of camp. The soft-spoken cornerback was being much more vocal. The change was also evident to linebacker Bart Scott, known to say a few words himself.
“He’s comfortable in telling Darrelle something, where he was taking instruction, now he can give out some out about how he wants to play certain formations,” Scott said. “He had all the tools, but sometimes you don’t know which tool to use until you’ve been in certain situations.”
howard.kussoy@nypost.com