
Newly acquired Jets WR Adonai Mitchell wore special custom cleats for his first career touchdown to bring awareness to children with diabetes. As a Type 1 diabetic diagnosed seven years ago, Mitchell explained how much this cause means to him and his desire to inspire other young athletes with this condition.
“At that time, the only real diabetics that were known in the league were Jay Cutler — and he didn’t really run — and then Patrick Peterson, who was a Type 2 diabetic,” Mitchell said, via ESPN’s Rich Cimini. “Now, in this day and age, you have myself and Mark Andrews.”
“There are a lot of people you can look at and say, ‘He’s OK. He has what I have and he’s able to do this.’ That was my biggest thing when I first got diagnosed. That was the only question I asked the doctor: Am I still going to be able to play football?”
Titans’ interim HC Mike McCoy highly praised QB Cam Ward, saying the rookie quarterback is proving to have a “burning desire to be great.”
“He’s getting better every day,” McCoy said, via Albert Breer of SI. “He has a burning desire to be great, and he’s learning. We’ll sit down sometime during the week, I’ll have some plays from the game, and go over them. Not the entire game, just some things to point out to him. He wants to be coached hard. He’s a competitor. He wants to play perfect, which is never going to happen, but you can see his improvement on a weekly basis.”
McCoy added that Ward responded well to the interception he recorded in Week 14’s win over the Browns.
“He’s going to make some mistakes, and it’s like ‘mistakes are on me, don’t worry about it buddy, you just keep plugging along.’ I’ll take the hit for any mistake you make, and we’ll learn from it and go from there. He’s learning how to play quarterback in the NFL. Two weeks ago, when he had the six carries, everyone went crazy here, but that’s just learning to take off when you can. This was the first interception he’s had in a long time, so it’s not a big deal. But I love the way he responded from it.”
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