DENVER — Once we final left Sauce Gardner, he was playfully marching off Lambeau Discipline sporting a cheesehead after the Jets upset the Packers final Sunday.
Within the aftermath of the incident, plenty of emails flooded my inbox from readers chastising Gardner as a cocky child rubbing the loss within the faces of his opponents.
Regardless of the optics of a seven-second Twitter video which may recommend in any other case to the uninformed, this isn’t who Gardner is.
The 22-year-old rookie cornerback out of Cincinnati, whom the Jets picked fourth general in April, is fun-loving, respectful, humble and hard-working. He deftly straddles a novel stability as a participant who is aware of he’s actually good with respectable potential to be nice, however who doesn’t thump his chest and inform you so.
Gardner has a novel chill vibe to him that makes him approachable and likeable.
“That’s simply me,’’ Gardner advised The Put up this previous week. “It’s pure. I don’t know the place it comes from. I’ve by no means been any person who does one thing and flaunts it. I’m an empath.’’
An “empath’’ is outlined as somebody who's “extremely attuned to the vitality and feelings round them.’’
Sauce likes to talk on the sphere, however he has boundaries.
“I positively discuss on the sphere, however I don’t get private,’’ he mentioned. “I preserve it inside one thing that may shuttle [with an opponent]. Nothing that will get private. I don’t convey up household or something. It’s like on the Packers recreation, I used to be simply having enjoyable with the cheesehead, soaking the second up. The second meant quite a bit to me.’’
When Gardner by chance walked into the Packers tunnel, Inexperienced Bay receiver Allen Lazard got here up from behind him and slapped the cheesehead off his head. However Lazard made it clear to reporters afterward that he wasn’t upset with Gardner, in actual fact saying he’d have most likely carried out the identical factor.
That is one among Gardner’s distinctive items — a present that goes past his exceptional bodily means on the sphere. Even when he’s beating his opponent, Gardner doesn’t piss folks off.
Subsequent up for Gardner is Denver’s prime receiver Jerry Jeudy when the 4-2 Jets play the 2-4 Broncos on Sunday at Empower Discipline at Mile Excessive, the place if issues go in addition to they did in Inexperienced Bay, Gardner would possibly trip “Thunder,’’ the Broncos’ mascot horse, to the workforce bus after the sport.
That is how younger, uncooked and refreshing Gardner is: When talking of Jeudy, who’s simply 23 and in his third NFL season, Gardner revealed that, when he was a beanpole high-school receiver, he used to review Jeudy’s strikes and emulate them.
“He’s a man who has nice confidence in himself [and] he positively has swagger,’’ Jets defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich mentioned. “Usually, the younger guys have a variety of that perspective and swagger and get on guys’ nerves. And he has this endearing high quality to him that although he's younger, and he's a rookie, his swag, his cockiness, it’s endearing.
“I feel guys like it. They gravitate in direction of it. He has this uncommon means as a rookie to have an effect on others and convey others with him. He’s actually a novel character in that method.’’
D.J. Reed, a veteran offseason free-agent acquisition who begins reverse Gardner, referred to as Sauce “tremendous humble, however on the identical time he is aware of he’s excellent so far as what God has blessed him with.’’
Gardner isn’t a participant who depends solely on his bodily abilities. He’s a scholar of the sport, a rabid movie watcher — a lot the identical method Darrelle Revis, the best Jets cornerback ever, operated.
“He is aware of he’s good, however he places the work in,’’ Reed mentioned. “God has given him stuff. He positively has it — 6-3, he’s lengthy, he has all of the prototypical traits that groups are in search of in a cornerback. You pair that together with his work ethic, he’s simply elite.’’
Ulbrich mentioned what the “informal observer’’ doesn’t see in Gardner is that he’s “a scholar of the sport on the highest stage. … That’s the explanation he’s going to be a particular participant on this league.’’
When Ulbrich’s praise about his note-taking was relayed to Gardner, he mentioned he had “no concept’’ his coach was paying any consideration to his notes and he appeared genuinely greatly surprised by it.
“I didn’t take notes in highschool,’’ Gardner mentioned. “It positively makes it simpler when you can watch a variety of movie of formation splits. Then whenever you get within the recreation it’s straightforward.’’
That’s the way in which Revis did it. He knew the place the opposing receiver he was overlaying was going earlier than the receiver made his break. Gardner mentioned he hasn’t met Revis but, however they spoke on the cellphone within the offseason.
“I need to be the perfect,’’ Gardner mentioned. “Right here with the Jets, [Revis] has been the usual. I need to create my very own customary. He’s positively any person I look as much as. He was an enormous participant right here and I need to be the following one.’’
Maybe sometime Gardner will personal his personal island the way in which Revis famously did.
“Sauce Island’’ absolutely has a pleasant ring to it.
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