Jets rookie wide receiver Omar Cooper Jr. said he was poised and ready on Thursday morning for his first training camp encounter with the news media until a shrill fire alarm emptied the room for about 10 minutes.
Back on the podium after the brief interruption, Cooper didn’t miss a beat as he calmly talked about making the leap from the college game to the NFL.
“Everybody is smarter,” Cooper, 22, said. “I feel like a lot of people say speed and size, but I feel like at the end of the day, it’s just football. But once you get to this level, you have players like Demario Davis, who’s been in it for 15 years, and so he’s calling out the plays. And so just a lot smarter people, people taking better angles, holes closing a lot faster, so just getting adjusted to that and being able to read it and be on the same page with the quarterback.”
Asked in a follow-up question if the NFL game is faster physically or mentally, Cooper didn’t hesitate: “Mentally.”
For the second time since the 2022 NFL Draft, the Jets made three selections in this past April’s first round — edge David Bailey at No. 2 overall, TE Kenyon Sadiq at No. 16 and then Cooper at No. 30 after a trade with San Francisco to move back into the first round to land the versatile WR who helped Indiana to last season’s national championship.
Cooper joins a promising wide receiver corps, which is led by Garrett Wilson and Adonai Mitchell, but offers opportunity in the offense being constructed by veteran coach Frank Reich. As promising a WR as Cooper certainly is, HC Aaron Glenn said on Thursday that as exciting the rookie crop appears, nothing is guaranteed.