Ainge, Jones Bail on Jets' Minicamp

After day one of New York's voluntary minicamp, new Jets head coach Rex Ryan spent the better part of a 25-minute press conference cracking jokes and talking confidently about his team. It wasn't all fun and games, though, as Ryan also had to briefly address the absences of quarterback Erik Ainge and running back Thomas Jones from the team's offseason activities.

Jones' absence is believed to be contract-related. The 30-year-old Jones is entering the third season of a four-year, $20 million contract, but is making just $900,000 base pay in 2009 and coming off a season where he racked up 1,300-plus rushing yards.

"This is a voluntary camp," Ryan said. "And if he's volunteering not to show up, you'll have to find out through him why he's not. I'm focused on the people that are here."

That list of attendees does not include Ainge, who saw no game action in his rookie season out of Tennessee, but was expected to provide some quarterback depth for the Jets. New York currently expects Kellen Clemens and Brett Ratliff -- options "1 and 1a," according to Ryan -- to battle for the starting QB spot, vacated at the end of the 2008 season when Brett Favre retired (again).

Ryan said that a "personal issue" was keeping Ainge out of camp. "Erik's going to have an opportunity to compete here," Ryan continued. "It's just a personal thing that he's not here right now, and that's all I'm going to comment on."

UPDATE: Word came out that Ainge's uncle, former NBA star Danny Ainge had suffered a mild heart attack. Whether or not that's the issue keeping Erik Ainge from attending the minicamp is not known, but there's a chance that's what kept him away. On the other hand, Erik missed workouts last week as well, long before this incident unfortunately happened.

How much impact Ainge missing camp will have is negligible, unless neither Clemens nor Ratliff clearly seizes the No. 1 spot -- a realistic possibility. An uncertain future for their third-string quarterback may also influence the Jets to look a little harder at a QB in the draft, be it early on with Mark Sanchez, Matthew Stafford or Josh Freeman, or in the later rounds with a project pick.