Vrentas Article on Santonio Holmes

Jets receiver Santonio Holmes thrives on gift for clutch playmaking

Published: Sunday, November 21, 2010

Santonio Holmes believes the moment will not pass him by.

This is why he replicates the exhaustion of the two-minute drill in the offseason with vigorous interval training. This is why he used to physically tug on his position coach’s shirt at Ohio State when the fourth quarter began. This is why he spent two days with legend Jerry Rice in Tampa, Fla., in the winter of 2008, as a hungry young receiver.

The product is what Jets coach Rex Ryan has dubbed “Tone Time,” Holmes’ uncanny knack for delivering clutch plays late in games when it matters most. Three times already this season he has been part of a play that directed the Jets to victory — his common denominator in high school, in college and in Super Bowl XLIII.

Is it honed? Is it innate? Holmes’ coolly confident answer was that “it’s proven” — and for now, it’s the very welcome property of the 7-2 Jets, who face the Houston Texans and their league-worst pass defense at 1 p.m. today at the Meadowlands.

“I really don’t talk about it a lot,” Holmes said. “I just get out and play football, fourth quarter. When it comes down to crunch time, just know I’ll be the guy, prepared, ready to go.”

Now in his fifth year, Holmes has racked up a healthy mass of 1,350 receiving yards and 11 touchdowns in the fourth quarter or overtime through in his NFL career. Four of those catches, including one unbelievable touchdown, made history for the Steelers on the game-winning drive in Super Bowl XLIII.

He gave former Pittsburgh coach Bill Cowher a victory on the final game of his NFL coaching career — “as of this point,” Cowher noted — with a 67-yard overtime touchdown against the Bengals in December 2006. He cost Ryan and the Ravens a Super Bowl ring in 2008, or so Ryan likes to say.

After helping the Jets to comeback victories at Denver and Detroit, Holmes took a simple slant 37 yards for the winning touchdown in Cleveland last Sunday — his first touchdown since being traded to the Jets for a fifth-round pick in April.

“It was really a basic route,” receivers coach Henry Ellard said. “But when he gets it in his hands, what he does with it, that’s what makes him so special. That’s that game factor that everybody talks about; that ‘Tone factor’ everybody talks about.”

The foundation is Holmes’ offseason training, a rigorous program he follows meticulously in Orlando, Fla., with longtime trainer Tom Shaw. Once 147 pounds in high school, Holmes drinks muscle milk three times a day and enhances his strength and speed to ensure his 5-11 frame has burst and power off the line of scrimmage.

He rests for only a week after the season, then reports to ESPN’s Wide World of Sports. The schedule repeats, with Sunday the only rest day, and includes four days of lifting, three days of plyometrics and route-running in sand pits, and competition with elite speedsters like Tennessee’s Chris Johnson and Detroit’s Calvin Johnson.

On Mondays and Thursdays, he hones his speed by running sprints down a ramp, on flat ground and against the resistance of parachutes. On Tuesdays, he mimics the two-minute drill with five grueling sets of “metabolics.” Shaw has him run 10 straight plays from the Jets’ route tree at full speed, jogging back to the line between plays, with two minutes of rest between each set of 10.

When Holmes was suspended for the first four games of the season for violating the league’s substance-abuse policy, he traveled between New Jersey and Florida with Shaw to maintain this regimen.

“The harder you train, the better you’re going to be in the fourth quarter toward the end of the year,” Shaw said. “He’s the guy that says, ‘Hey coach, I want to do another set; one more set to make sure I’m right.’ ”

Holmes applies his speed and strength to route-running that his teammates and coaches, to a man, call “very disciplined.” Ellard praised Holmes’ suddenness and change of direction, and ability to set the defender up to move where he needs to go. Like the wiliest veterans Ellard has coached, including Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt, once Holmes puts his foot down, he creates critical separation.

The perfection began at Ohio State, where Holmes’ receivers coach, Darrell Hazell, said they worked every day on perfecting the hard angle break point. He took another leap forward in 2008, with the help of the man considered the position’s greatest ever.

Holmes said he and Rice share the same marketing team and were able to meet when Rice was in Florida for a charity golf event. They talked, worked out and set up cone drills at the University of South Florida to tune the finer points of Holmes’ route-running: dropping your hips, staying low in breaks and transitioning in and out of routes. Less than a year later, Holmes became the Super Bowl MVP.

“Just hearing those encouraging words on how to be focused, how to stay in the game late in games, how to be precise in running your routes,” Holmes said, “that helped alone in my preparation on being a great receiver from then on.”

The Jets eased in Holmes after his suspension, using him on less than 50 percent of the offensive snaps in his first two games back. But he has taken on a full load and a starting role since the Week 8 Green Bay game.

Ellard said Holmes plays as the “X” receiver, or split end, 40 to 50 percent of the time, and then moves around. He presents a challenge for defenders, who often don’t want to play him in press coverage, because his strength and quickness favor him at the line of scrimmage. Defenses have rolled double coverage to fellow receiver Braylon Edwards because of his size — Edwards estimated that happened on about 70 percent of the snaps at Cleveland — and often left Holmes one-on-one.

But his big plays will warrant attention. Against Denver, Holmes drew a defensive pass interference call on a critical fourth-and-6 in the fourth quarter — still almost catching the ball — to set up the game-winning touchdown. In overtime at Detroit, his 52-yard catch led to the winning field goal. Then last week, he ran that successful slant.

Holmes has not been shy about asking for the ball late in games, like he did at Ohio State, with the tug on Hazell’s shirt, or in Pittsburgh. Hazell, who recalls key fourth-quarter touchdowns from Holmes in victories against Michigan and Michigan State, explains it’s not arrogance, but rather “extreme confidence” and an enviable relaxation as if Holmes were “cruising through the mall.”

“He’s a fearless guy,” Cowher said. “I knew there was a special quality. Regardless of what has happened for 59 minutes, when it’s the last minute of a game, he still feels like he can make any play needed.”

The play last week was actually supposed to be a 5-yard hitch route. But Holmes and quarterback Mark Sanchez discussed in the huddle that if cornerback Eric Wright was playing off the line, Sanchez would signal for the slant instead. That’s what happened, and three missed tackles and eight seconds later, Holmes was extending his arms like a jet plane in the end zone.

The Jets took a chance on Holmes, both taking on the off-field history that caused the Steelers to part ways and believing in his talent. These past few weeks, they’ve seen what a difference “Tone time” can make.

“Some guys don’t want to step up to the plate,” Holmes said. “Some guys don’t want to carry the team on their back, or want to be the downfall.

“Regardless of what the situation is, I want to be one of those guys that helps carry this team.”

http://www.nj.com/jets/index.ssf/2010/11/santonio_holmes_gift_for_clutc.html