Kearse brings Sea change to Jets
Less than 48 hours after arriving at the Jets facility for the first time in early September, Jermaine Kearse approached Leonard Williams for a conversation.
Kearse had just joined the Jets as part of a Sept. 1 trade that sent star defensive lineman Sheldon Richardson to the Seahawks. In return, the Jets received needed receiver depth and experience in Kearse — a Super Bowl winner entering his sixth season — plus a second-round pick in next year’s draft.
Almost immediately, Kearse identified Williams as a team leader. And after spending five seasons in Seattle under Pete Carroll — who created an unorthodox but widely acclaimed championship culture with the Seahawks — Kearse was determined to get a feel for his new team by speaking to players one at a time, a tedious process he viewed as entirely necessary.
“I was surprised. I was excited. I was like, man, this is the type of mindset, these are the type of guys that we need on this team,” Williams told the Daily News Friday of his conversation with Kearse, as the Jets prepared to fly to Miami for a Sunday matchup with the Dolphins. “Right away, talking to him, I was like, ‘All right. This guy’s a winner.’”
Since that initial conversation with Williams, Kearse has played an integral role in helping Todd Bowles establish a new and more unified culture at One Jets Drive — a major reason the Jets (33) have exceeded expectations through six games.
Last year, Bowles’ locker room fractured under the weight of losses, missed expectations and volatile personalities. But this year?
“It’s f---ing night and day. It’s not the same s--t at all,” tight end Austin Seferian-Jenkins told The News of the culture change. “I’m happy it’s not. That s--t was bad.”
“Jermaine’s had a big part in that,” Seferian-Jenkins said.
After speaking with Williams, Kearse proceeded to have conversations with other veterans in the Jets locker room, listening to their experiences while also sharing his own thoughts.
“There’s good teams in the NFL each year, and it’s just something so minor and something so detailed that separates good teams from bad teams,” Kearse told the News. “I felt like if there was any chance that I could help create a culture and a similar mindset where everybody was on the same page, that we could have success here.”
Kearse also instantly started sitting in on the Jets’ leadership meetings, which Williams is a part of along with around 10 other players.
“It’s really impressive,” Williams said of Kearse’s proactivity. “Coming into a locker room with 50-plus people, you’re not from here, you’re from a whole different team, for most people it would probably be easy to just keep your head down and be quiet and focus on you. But he did the opposite. He reached out. He exposed himself. He put himself out there and went out on a limb.”
Of course, Kearse won’t take full credit. He prefers to say he helped “continue the momentum” started by his teammates and coaches, including Bowles, before he got to Florham Park.
Still, there’s no denying the impact Kearse has made in his short time with the Jets.
And his message is a simple one: “Winning consistently,” Kearse says, “it’s more than Xs and Os. …You’ve got to have a certain camaraderie with your teammates, because at the end of the day, you’ve got to lean onto one another. This is the ultimate team sport. There’s no sport like this. There’s no other sport that takes 11 guys doing their job right to have one successful play.”
Kearse already sees similarities between the Jets’ culture and the Seahawks’, even if he knows his new team has a long way to go before it reaches a championship pedigree.
“It’s still ongoing here,” Kearse said. “We’re going to go through some growing pains. We’re going to hit some rough spots and we’re going have some highs and we’re going to have some lows, and that’s just all part of the process.”