Jets Rookie Is Undeterred by the Crowd at Tight End

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — Around a corner and through another doorway, the Jets’ draft choices and undrafted free agents were holed up in the back of the practice facility locker room. The small lockers are squeezed together and miscellaneous gear — gloves, knee braces, helmets — lined the tops. And, for Dustin Keller, there was a container of pretzels.

Dustin Keller, the Jets’ second draft pick, gained more than 60 pounds in switching to tight end from wide receiver at Purdue.

Analysis and discussion of the N.F.L. draft and off-season news from around the league.

“The sodium prevents cramping and stuff like that,” Keller, a tight end from Purdue drafted 30th over all by the Jets, said from the team’s rookie minicamp. “Also, I just love pretzels. You’ll see that on my locker every day.”

But as one tight end’s locker fills with pretzels, another’s may be on the verge of emptying. Keller came to the Jets — unknowingly, he said — in the midst of a dispute between the team and last year’s starting tight end, Chris Baker.

“I’ve heard about it now,” Keller said. “But I don’t really know much about it. Right now, I’m just in the camp trying to learn the plays. I can’t wait for Chris to get into camp so I can learn some things from him.”

That is, if Baker even comes to camp.

Unhappy with his contract, Baker requested a trade the week before the draft and was denied by the Jets. The team also fueled his anger by signing tight end Bubba Franks as a free agent to a deal that is set to pay him more than Baker, even though Franks would be his backup. Baker has since threatened to boycott the team’s off-season training activities.

“He outperformed his contract the last two years,” Baker’s agent, Jonathan Feinsod, said last week. “He’s severely underpaid. He’d like to be brought up to market.”

Last week, General Manager Mike Tannenbaum would not discuss Baker’s contract, but said that the Jets expected Baker to be present for all the mandatory events, “be it minicamp or training camp.”

To Coach Eric Mangini, though, the tight end uncertainty offers a fresh set of options on offense.

“Someone may distinguish himself in the red zone, someone may distinguish himself on third down,” he said Saturday. “You just try to see where they best fit, what the best combinations are and how you want to use them most effectively.”

The Jets drafted Keller with their second pick of the first round, after a trade with the Green Bay Packers that cost them selections in the second and the fourth rounds.

“I didn’t expect that,” Keller said. “Going in the first round was a goal of mine and them trading up made that dream come true.”

The dream, however, was only realized after a long stretch of boredom. Watching the draft with his family in a suite at Purdue’s stadium in West Lafayette, Ind., Keller said he sent out a friend to buy the game Connect Four just to kill time. On the plus side, Keller said, he now considers himself a “Connect Four all-American.”

It was in that same stadium that others knew him as an honorable mention all-American tight end.

Keller, born and raised in Indiana, was originally recruited by the Boilermakers to play wide receiver. But his coaches determined that if he bulked up his 6-foot-2, 185-pound frame, Keller could play tight end, and they moved him inside during the spring of his sophomore year. That meant going back into the playbook to learn it inside out.

“When you’re playing tight end, you have to know everything the offensive line knows, all the calls, all the checks,” said Keller, who is now listed by the Jets at 248 pounds. “You have to know everything the receivers know as far as routes, when to break something up, when to keep on running. So you pretty much have to know everything the quarterback knows.”

Keller caught 68 passes for 881 yards last season, but he was criticized for his blocking. Playing behind Baker, who has a reputation as a superb blocker, will only increase the pressure on Keller to develop the skill quickly.

“It’s something I wasn’t asked to do that much at Purdue,” he said. “But I know that with time and work and repetition, I will become a very good blocker.”

And once again, as he tries to prove himself, Keller is memorizing the playbook.

“I’ve just been taking notes in meetings on every single thing,” he said. “I look at them in the morning when I get up, I look at them at night and all my breaks in between. At first it was just a lot of information, but now everything’s starting to make sense.”

Greg Bishop contributed reporting.