Before Jets fans get downright giddy over Thursday night’s 16-6 preseason win in Pittsburgh, here’s a cold, hard dose of reality.
Sam Cowart, the free-agent linebacker who is expected to be the team’s defensive star this season, missed the game with a tweaked hamstring suffered during the first practice of training camp. And there’s no guarantee he’ll be ready for the Sept. 8 opener in Buffalo.
“To say Sam could play a whole game today, I doubt it,” Jets coach Herman Edwards said yesterday.
Cowart did take a step, albeit a tentative one, when he went through a no-contact practice. It was his first action since July 27, when Cowart tweaked his right hamstring during drills.
A tweaked hamstring usually is not a cause for serious concern. But when a player has missed essentially the last two seasons to major injuries – a severe ankle sprain and a torn Achilles tendon – as Cowart has, the priority is to get back on the field.
“I’d just like to see him get through a week of practice, that’s probably the first thing that he’s got to get through,” Edwards said. “Just going through pads and feeling sore and the next day waking up and practicing again.”
Cowart was ahead of schedule in his rehab from the Achilles injury suffered in the first game of last season. The Jets weren’t expecting him to be ready to practice when camp opened, but he surprised them by taking the field two weeks early. That’s when he suffered the tweak.
Cowart said that day he needs this training camp to regain his confidence. Yet Thursday night he watched the Pittsburgh game from the training room at the Jets’ Hofstra practice complex. He said he’d like to play in two preseason games and be ready for the opener.
“My goal is to always be an every-down player,” Cowart said. “I think on one side, prove that I can do it again, prove that I’m able to be out there for a length of time. But all that takes time. These next three weeks of training camp, if I can stand up and make it through that, look well and look presentable, I think the opportunity may present itself.”
Edwards has said he will not rush Cowart, who will play the “Will” linebacker position. Edwards referred to that as the glamour position. It’s why the Jets gave Cowart a six-year, $31 million free-agent contract.
“To me, Sam Cowart doesn’t have to prove anything in the preseason,” Edwards said. “I think what he has to do is get well so he can play football.”
If Cowart can return to the form he showed in 2000, when he posted 181 tackles before missing the final four games with a sprained ankle resulting from a cheap hit by Tampa Bay’s Frank Middleton, the Jets could have a ferocious defense. Mo Lewis and Marvin Jones are two of the better linebackers in the game.
“If I can get out there and join those guys, we may be one of the best [units] in the league,” Cowart said.