Jets tight end Kellen Winslow has many positive attributes. Among them is confidence.
His confidence is peaking as he prepares to face the team that drafted him in 2004, the Browns.
“Really, they can’t guard me,” Winslow told Jane McManus of ESPNNewYork.com. “That’s how I feel, and I can’t be guarded, you know? . . . .
“Who’s going to guard me over there? Nobody. That’s how I feel and that’s how I play the game. That’s how you gotta play the game. You’ve just got to play the game and that’s all.”
It’s less of a slap at the Browns and more of a reflection of the confidence that Winslow (and many other NFL players) need to have in order to suit up on Sundays and be effective. For Winslow, his confidence extends to the question of why he hasn’t played more in 2013, his first season with the Jets.
"[W]hen the tape’s turned on, I feel good about what I put on tape,” Winslow said. “Because nobody cares about practice really, it’s all about the game on what’s on tape. Dealing with politics, this and that, just the game of the game, it’s all about Sunday and what you put on tape, and that’s what they can go back to.”
He’s right, to an extent. But practice is where players get comfortable with each other. Winslow, who continues to find a way to play despite a series of knee injuries dating back to a motorcycle accident in 2005, doesn’t practice much, and so he doesn’t play as much as he’d like.
He’d surely like to play even more when the Browns come to town on Sunday. The extent to which he does provides one of the only intriguing angles for an otherwise meaningless game.