Did Aaron Rodgers and the Jets ghost the Bucs in joint practice?

The New York Jets and Tampa Bay Buccaneers were scheduled for two days of joint practice in NYC, but the Jets only showed up for one. 

The New York Jets and Tampa Bay Buccaneers participated in a fruitful joint practice session on Wednesday. Aaron Rodgers, Dalvin Cook, and the Jets’ slew of new arrivals still need time to gel. The Bucs, meanwhile, are undergoing an adjustment period of their own with Baker Mayfield stepping into Tom Brady’s shoes at QB.

Joint practice schedules are generally agreed to in March. The Jets and Bucs were supposed to run two days together, but the Bucs spent Thursday practicing on their own… at the Giants’ practice facility.

New York were nowhere to be found and the Giants stepped in with a courteous gesture. It looks like Tampa was ghosted in advance of the Bucs’ preseason showdown on Saturday night.

New York Jets ghost Tampa Bay Buccaneers at joint practice

In all fairness to New York, the Bucs did have some advanced warning. The Jets cancelled prior to Thursday, per ESPN insider Rich Cimini, due to Robert Saleh’s player safety concerns: “second joint practices tend to get chippy and have more injuries.”

That’s a valid concern for a head coach. In fact, it’s extremely positive for NFL teams to approach player safety with extreme caution and sensitivity. New York will get another bite at the proverbial apple with the Bucs on Saturday, and vice versa.

That said, it’s a bit rich for New York to cancel a pre-scheduled practice session. This does read as mildly self-important from the Jets’ perspective. Injuries are common in regular 11-on-11 drills too, and there are workarounds for genuine injury concerns that don’t involve cancelling on a team that made an early trip from Florida to New Jersey.

Aaron Rodgers and New York still have plenty to figure out ahead of NFL opening week. The offensive line has been a disaster in camp and Robert Saleh very forcefully put his own players on blast. Plus, the arrival of Dalvin Cook leads to new questions about the offensive hierarchy, specifically in the RB room. He’s a talented volume runner who now has to learn a new system on an abbreviated timeline. Cook has spent his entire six-year NFL career with Minnesota until now.

This will eventually blow over and there’s no indication that Tampa Bay feels slighted or misled, but the Jets will have to back it up on the field Saturday. Robert Saleh talks a big game, even in preseason, and the Jets run the risk of bad optics if the Bucs blow them out of the water.