After missing two games with a thigh injury, Pete Kendall returned to his familiar left guard position last Sunday. The 33-year old Kendall is an 11-year NFL veteran who has provided valuable teaching to a young Jets' offensive line featuring the rookie duo of center Nick Mangold and left tackle D'Brickashaw Ferguson. Kendall was asked Thursday of the line's progress.
"If you're asking are we satisfied, I would say no. I don't think any of us believe we are where we can be and hope to be by the end of the year," Kendall said. "That being said, we all understood that we were going to be a work in progress.
"Two young guys coming in and learning the ropes - doing a good job really picking it up quickly," he added. "But we also brought in AC (Anthony Clement), so there wasn't like there was a lot of carry over from last year to this year."
Read below for the Complete Kendall Transcript
On his preparation this week…
As you get more involved, later in the week, you want to focus more and more on your one on one match ups. Today is our third-down day, so today would be a good day to look at the individuals that you match up against in pass protection and if they give anything away, by alignment or something, so that you have some idea what moves to expect. That's one of the things that I was taught early and I think it's good for young guys to learn.
On what type of rookie he was…
I thought I had a pretty good rookie year. I kind of understood the concepts, I had played for an offensive line coach, George Warhop, who's in San Francisco now, who taught pretty much the same fundamentals and technique as Howard Mudd, he's in Indy now, who was my coach in Seattle my first two years. The biggest adjustment for any rookie is what do you do after Thanksgiving? How do you take care of your body, when you hit that wall? That's a hard time of year for guys who are used to being done and having a couple of weeks off before Bowl practice. I don't know if everybody involved would agree but I thought I had a productive rookie season. A lot of it had to do with the fact that the older guys were there to tell me, "This is what's going to happen to you. This is how you can get extra rest. You need to be in the training room with your feet up and you need to study the film because you're not going to get as many practice repetitions.
On seeing progress from the offensive line…
If you're asking are we satisfied, I would say no. I don't think any of us believe we are where we can be and hope to be by the end of the year. That being said, we all understood that we were going to be a work in progress. Two young guys coming in and learning the ropes, doing a good job really picking it up quickly, but we also brought in AC (Anthony Clement) so there wasn't like there was a lot of carry over from last year to this year.
On the offensive line starting over completely…
I guess it depends on what the thought process is or what the plan is. We were an older group last year with myself, Jason (Fabini) and Kevin (Mawae). These things happen in this business where teams try to get younger. This was an unusual circumstance where two quality offensive lineman for them. I don't know if the plan was for them to go with two rookies but it happened that it fell into place for them on draft day, so that's what they did. There are many ways to get younger, you can go rookies, you can go guys who just came out of their first contracts, four and five year guys. Whatever the case may be you just try to throw those five or six guys or seven guys in a room and try to get them on the same page as best you can and hope to be productive on Sundays.
On the challenges in facing Jacksonville's defensive line…
Physically it's a big challenge for me, John (Henderson) is a bigger guy than I am. It's not always going to be me against John one-on-one, and that's not the story line going in. Some teams are fast, some teams are huge in bulk and Jacksonville falls a little bit into that. It's not only a stiff test for me, but for everybody here.
On learning leverage and technique coming with experience or being innate…
Maybe a little bit of both. If it's not innate, you certainly can be taught it, understanding leverage and where to place your hands and how to roll your hips. I've spent hours and hours of my life, against my will most of the time, to learn that stuff so that it becomes second nature. It can be taught, it can be innate, either way it still takes repetitions to be the best it can be.
On when he needed technique to compensate for not being the biggest…
I don't think I ever was the biggest guy on the field. I didn't even start on my High School team as a junior. I went to Boston College and I was in sort of the same situation that I'm in now, which is I'm little, relatively speaking. It became obvious to me, particularly when I got to Boston College, that I wasn't going to survive on being bigger then everybody else. I had to learn how to play with leverage and technique or I'd have a fun four years in college and I'd be off doing something else.
