Mauldin maudlin about his future with Jets

Lorenzo Mauldin could be in his final days with the Jets, and it sounds like he knows it.

The outside linebacker is not expected to make the team, but he said Sunday he feels like he has done enough to make the final 53.

“I mean, yeah,” Mauldin said when asked directly if he has done enough to make it. “I’m coming back off a back injury. We’ve got seven good guys in our [outside linebacker] room. I’m not going to say that I’m the main guy. If the coaches feel like I’m able to stay, so be it.”

Mauldin seemed to indicate with a post on Twitter last week that he knew he was in danger of being cut. But Mauldin said the tweet was about something else and people misinterpreted it.

“I don’t want to talk about that tweet,” he said. “That tweet was not toward the Jets at all. It was something that was going on personal in my life.”

It has been a quick decline for Mauldin, whom the Jets picked in the third round of the 2015 draft. He had four sacks as a rookie and showed promise as a situational pass rusher. But a hamstring injury kept him off the field for parts of the 2016 season and a back injury caused him to miss all of last year.

Mauldin entered training camp this year intent on showing he belonged, but another hamstring injury caused him to miss most of camp. He returned last week but played only two snaps Fri- day night against the Giants. The snaps came late in the fourth quarter.

“I get in where I fit in,” he said. “If the coaches want to put me in, then they put me in. If they don’t, they don’t.”

He has one more shot t hi s week to show the Jets something in the fourth preseason game with the Eagles, but the chances look slim.

“He has a chance to prove himself in this ballgame,” Jets coach Todd Bowles said. “He’s been injured. You don’t come back and just play. He’s got to have a couple of days of practice under his belt and he’ll get a chance to play y this week.”

Mauldin is treating this like a regular week.

“Basically, whatever happens happens,” Mauldin said of his mindset. “I go out there, I play, and I do what I’ve got to do. Simple as that. It’s a regular week for me, man. I just go out and work k and do what I can, and let the chips fall where they may.”