The Jets will wrap up their offseason next week with mandatory minicamp. Then they'll break for summer and won't practice again as team until training camp opens in late July. That is when rookie edge David Bailey, the team's No. 2 overall selection in April's draft, will put the pads on for the first time in his NFL career.
Bailey. whose 14.5 sacks and 21.3 percent pressure rate at Texas Tech last season led the FBS, was widely considered the best pass rusher in the draft.
"The first step quickness is something that pops off the tape, like immediately," said head coach Aaron Glenn after a recent OTA. "… The physical part of it you just can't get as much as you want in that aspect. But you do see the hand usage, you do see the moves he's trying to create, and this is the time when you want to work on some things that you might not feel as comfortable with – this is the time to work on those things. So, he's working on some of his weaknesses, but you do see the strong points of what he has, and I don't ever want him to lose sight of that, of the things we know that he can do."
Bailey (6-3, 251), listed as an edge who will line up at OLB in a 3-4 and DE when the Jets line up with four defensive linemen, had 52 tackles last season with the Red Raiders including 19.5 TFL. Texas Tech ran a 4-2-5 system and Bailey, an explosive, twitchy athlete, thrived following his arrival from Stanford. Jets DL coach Karl Dunbar was asked this week about Bailey as a run defender.
"Can he rush the passer? That's what we're going to do with him, alright," Dunbar told reporters. "But you saw that, there's a lot of guys who weren't asked to play the run, weren't asked to do those things in college. Have you been watching our practices? Have you been seeing what we're doing? We're teaching him how to do what? Play the run. Because you've got to earn the right to rush the passer. If you don't stop the run, they're not going to throw the ball, so we're going to teach him and everybody else in the room how to stop the run and then we're going to get after the quarterback."