If you know one thing about Sauce Gardner, it's this: If you think you see something in the cornerback's game that he needs to work on, he's already working on it.
"I love it, I love how everything I do is under a microscope," Gardner said following the Jets' Thursday training camp practice. "I was having a conversation with [Michael] Carter yesterday, and I said I set the bar so high that I'm really competing with myself now.
"Everything I do is under a microscope. And I love that. I love challenges. I love everything about that. And it took me a little time to have that mentality, but I embrace it now. A lot."
It was hard to imagine anyone casting an evil eye his way in his first two Jets seasons as he burst on the scene with the NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year award in 2022 plus two Pro Bowl selections and a pair of first-team All-Pro berths. Last season was another matter as some boo birds picked on his tackling, penalties and dearth of interceptions.
After all he'd accomplished those first two seasons, Gardner couldn't be blamed for looking over his shoulder and giving his naysayers the hairy eyeball.
"Last year, I would see it and I would be like, 'Bro, what?' And I would keep going," he said. "Now it's not even a 'Bro, what?' I expect people to make more of things than what it is now. I don't even really acknowledge it. ... Now it's not even a factor."
That's because Gardner is the goods. He threw himself into this offseason with his mind on taking his already prodigious corner skills to the next level.
"I worked on everything. I worked on tackling, catching the ball, footwork, eye discipline," he said. "I feel like I progressed a lot. I'm always going to be my biggest critic. By the time somebody says something to me, I've already told myself the same thing."
That echoed the sentiment that head coach Aaron Glenn, himself a former 15-year pro CB, expressed to reporters minutes earlier Thursday about how his players need to ignore the noise, from cornerbacks to quarterbacks and every position in between.
"You're always going to hear that. That's just the nature of it," Glenn said. "You're going to get criticized. People are going to have expectations. And that's OK. But you can't have people having higher expectations of you than you have of yourself."
Gardner, who recently signed his lucrative contract extension to remain with the Jets, is now taking all those parts of his game that he focused on this offseason and polishing them up even more during practices. And he hasn't had to look too hard for tackling work, since 1-on-1 drills have been a significant component of Glenn's recent practices.
"It's another drill for us to compete," Gardner said. "They say it's an offensive drill, and I actually think it is as well. But the fact that [defensive players] were able to win some of them and we were able to say, 'Nah, this is about to be our drill,' that just builds that competitive spirit. That's what I'm all about and what this team is all about."
The training camp contact also told Sauce about more than just practice competition. It told him that his HC was ready to play his starters for a short while in Saturday night's preseason opener at Green Bay: "We're playing," Glenn said. The reason? "Because I want our guys to play. That's the reason."
AG even said, in the manner of his mentor, Bill Parcells, almost 30 years ago, that he wants to win this opener. And that's one more thing that doesn't cause Sauce one second of heartburn.
"No, it did not surprise me at all," said Gardner, who may be a Gen Z guy on social media but at the same time is a throwback to the way things used to be and still need to be today to win in the NFL. "I love football, I'm obsessed with football.I'm always going to love the idea of it."
In short, bring on the microscopes. Sauce sounds as if he'll be providing plenty of things to see and talk about now that the games are about to begin.
