Opportunity knocked for Coleman

Sport’s latest heir to Wally Pipp’s world-class headache is Reggie Tongue’s strained calf muscle – but that’s giving more credit to a bad break and good timing than it is to Erik Coleman’s sense of the moment.

Maybe you’ve heard of his new motto: Carpe start. Seize the job.

Across the National Football League this weekend, maybe a dozen or more rookies will have insinuated themselves into the starting lineups of teams either desperate at this position or that, or so heavily invested in a first-rounder’s bonus and salary that they have to justify it by cutting an eight-year veteran. And then there are those rookies who earned it.

Erik Coleman saw opportunity land in his lap on his second day of training camp with the New York Jets. That’s when Tongue – signed away from Seattle to a four-year, $5.4 million contract to fill a void at strong safety – came up lame and limped to the sidelines. Where he would remain for 25 days.

“It was a tough thing for Reggie,” acknowledged Coleman, the Jets’ fifth-round draft pick out of Washington State and, before that, Lewis and Clark High School, “but it was going to give somebody a chance and luckily it was me.”

To no one’s surprise back home – but to considerable surprise in New York – Coleman didn’t give it back.

He didn’t just fill in behind, he leapfrogged ahead. Seemingly every day, he’d make a play in practice that would turn somebody’s head, and after a couple of skittish performances in the early exhibitions, he made that same jump in games. Which is why, even with Tongue healthy again and ready, Coleman is expected to start Sunday’s opener against Cincinnati.

“He’s not intimidated to go out there,” said Jets coach Herman Edwards. “He doesn’t really care that he’s a fifth-round draft pick. He just wants to play.”

If the NFL had been looking, this should have been the most obvious conclusion on the scouting report. At WSU, Coleman played and got an emergency start as a freshman without the benefit of a redshirt year. As a sophomore, he slid over to fill the shoes of the injured Marcus Trufant, only the best cover corner the school has ever produced. And as a junior, he took over at free safety for Lamont Thompson, only the all-time Pacific-10 Conference interception leader.

Next we’ll hear he’s taking a role Denzel turned down.

But for now, he’s merely jumped from the school play to Broadway. And if he’s been neither intimidated nor overwhelmed, Coleman has been tested.

“At first, it seems over your head,” he said. “Just learning the defense by itself, that’s hard enough. But when you come out of the huddle, we have a lot of double calls – if a guy goes in motion, there’s this set of checks, and if it’s another formation, there’s different checks. And with the speed of the game, it seems like they’re snapping the ball when they come out of the huddle.

“Receivers are so much faster – they’re by you like that. Linemen are so much faster – they’re on you quicker. You have to be focused, fast, on every play or they’ll just run over you.”

And yet they haven’t, at least not that anyone’s noticed.

“He is light years ahead of me when I was a rookie,” Tongue told reporters after one practice. “I came in and my head was spinning. He listens, and he tells us some things.”

But he is no prodigy. Prodigy is not nearly as painstaking as Coleman’s approach, which is serious and diligent and thorough.

Which is not to say he can’t laugh at his mistakes, since he’s committed to learning from them.

“Embarrassing moments? There have been a lot of those,” he admitted.

“The first play of the Giants (exhibition) game. Our coaches had been telling us all week to watch play-action, that they were going to throw vertical and stretch the field – especially on the first play.

“So he puts us in a cover-4 coverage and I’m over the tight end, and sure enough there’s play-action. I take my eyes off my guy for a second and he runs by me and is open for a 30-yard gain. The first play. Hopefully, that won’t happen again.”

This is about learning, and also unlearning.

“I’ve been too eager some of the time,” he said. “At the snap, I would try to find the football and just go with my instincts – and sometimes you could get away with that in college.

“Not here. Offenses are very smart. If you don’t get your drop, if you make a mistake, they’re going to exploit it. I’ve had to go back to fundamentals and play within the defense more.”

And yet the last thing the Jets want to do is neuter his aggressiveness.

This was Edwards’ message before that Giants game, the Jets’ third exhibition. Coleman had been the revelation of camp – “it seemed like I was making a big play at least once a day,” he recalled – but he had been mostly invisible.

Edwards – like defensive coordinator Donnie Henderson (a former Idaho assistant) a former DB himself – pulled Coleman aside and challenged him.

“I told him that, ‘You started the past couple of games (but) you really haven’t done anything,’ ” Edwards revealed to reporters. ” ‘You’ve just been No. 26 out there. I can go do that. I can play deep and never get beat. You need to make some plays.’ “

Coleman didn’t need it spelled out any more bluntly. Against the Giants, he came up big on five tackles. On one blitz, he outfoxed Tiki Barber and blew in to sack quarterback Kurt Warner, forcing a fumble the Jets recovered; another play, he and Jon McGraw came on a double safety blitz on Warner’s blind side, and McGraw’s sack forced a punt.

“It felt good to finally make a play,” said Coleman. “The veteran guys were crowding around me, yelling, and I felt like I was one of the guys. It’s hard for a rookie to fit in with the older guys, but it always helps when they see you can make a play.”

Of course, the Jets vets don’t have much choice. In addition to Coleman at strong safety, the Jets are likely to start another rookie – Oklahoma’s Derrick Strait, who Coleman and the Cougs remember from the 2003 Rose Bowl – at cornerback.

“It’s what you got,” Edwards said. “You don’t worry about it. They’re going to play. They’ll get beat sometimes on physical things, or knowledge of a receiver. You just hope they don’t blow coverages – just don’t flat miss a coverage so a guy’s running wide open. “But we’re not going to get scared all of a sudden on opening day. They got to play.”

Still, Coleman said the coaches have been extra critical this week – “all those little mistakes I made in the preseason, I’m not getting away with them now.”

And though he’s trying to keep the same even keel that carried him through four years at Wazzu, he can’t help but sneak himself a measure of satisfaction.

“It’s a great feeling, to know I’m good enough to play at this level,” he said. “I’ve always known that and had confidence in myself, and now I can show other people – especially the teams that passed on me.”

He shares that joy long distance with other Cougs – Jason David, who has stuck with Indianapolis, and Devard Darling in Arizona, and his former Pullman roommate, Hamza Abdullah.

And for advice, he’s gone to the source – Trufant, who as a rookie started 16 games for the Seahawks last year.

“He said not to worry about who you’re playing against – just play your game,” Coleman said. “Don’t get nervous about playing against Terrell Owens or whoever. It’s the same game you’ve been playing all your life.

“Of course, that’s always been Marcus.”

Now it’s Erik Coleman, too.