Tajh Boyd is an impressive young man, off the field as well as on it. The Jets' sixth-round rookie quarterback talked with me at the end of the full-squad minicamp about shifting his home base of operations from the college town of Clemson, SC, to the Big Apple.

"New York is a different world," Boyd said. "I went up there over the weekend. I'm a big movie guy, so I see a movie every week. I also want to go see some plays in the city, 'The Lion King.' For some people, you get a chance to be a tourist. For us now, you get a chance to be cultured and be around the area."

For those Jets fans holding their breath to find out if our rookie QB was turning into Broadway Tajh Boyd, well, only in the sense of hanging out at the Minskoff Theatre.

There are also no worries because besides the cinema, Tajh is a fan of great literature. He's currently burying himself not inside a Playbill but rather inside OC Marty Mornhinweg's playbook.

"Just the type of offense is totally different," he said, comparing MM's scheme to the one he directed for three years for the Clemson Tigers. "You're running a true West Coast offense and working with Coach Mornhinweg, who's in the same class as Mike Holmgren, Bill Walsh and all those guys."

How so? Boyd points to the details he's trying to absorb.

"Everything's pretty precise, whether it's the footwork or the read. Once you start to look at the plays and the concepts and why they're built like that, you start to understand why everything is so precise," he said. "You want to go out there, you can't be a perfectionist, but at the same time that's who I am naturally. So you get to the point where you just want to get everything.

"It takes time. I've got to understand that, to be patient a little bit. But I'm doing everything I can so that I'm ready and I'm confident when I go on the field."

That doesn't sound as if Boyd is in the middle of a month of overdosing on the City That Never Sleeps. He knows that while Geno Smith and Michael Vick go* mano a mano* for the No. 1 job, he's in his own QB battle, with Matt Simms for the No. 3 spot on the depth chart.

He's spent his time wisely since the minicamp broke June 19. The study plans included going over protections with Dalton Freeman, his center with the Tigers and now a Jets teammate, and maybe even returning to "the cradle of quarterbacks" around his Hampton, VA, hometown to work out with Vick.

"Obviously I'm blessed to be in this position," he said, "because those guys mean the world to me."

Once the next two weeks of cramming are over, Boyd will pass his conditioning run here at the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center and then join his young teammates for the busride to Cortland, NY, for the start of training camp.

"I've got a lot of work to do as far as me understanding," he said. "So you tell the guys to get breaks, and I'm going to get a break mentally as much as I can. But at the same time, I have to grind. There's certain work that has to be done, so I've got to get in the best shape possible and get ready to compete."