Just what you’ve always wanted: a Willie Colon autograph.
Credit: Kristian Dyer, Metro
Resting on the top shelf of rookie offensive lineman Dakota Dozier’s locker is an autographed picture of Willie Colon.
Dozier is not the only member of the Jets’ roster with a Colon headshot in his locker. Second-year offensive lineman Dalton Freeman has one as well, also resting on the top shelf of his locker mixed among socks and deodorant.
They aren’t autograph collectors necessarily. They won the autographed headshot of Colon after their recent appearance on “Jets Huddle,” which airs on CBS2. The duo won a game show against two teammates and got the autographed photos as their prize.
The photo isn’t even glossy as one Jets player noted during the course of an interview.
The combination of Dozier and Freeman beat the tight end tandem of Jace Amaro and Chris Pantale in a yet-to-be-aired segment on the show (whoops, spoiler alert). There was a brainteaser portion and a skills portion, such as catching a dollar bill dropped out of the air.
And the winning team won Colon’s headshot and autograph, which Dozier and Freeman now keep in a place of prominence in their lockers.
“I’m glad to display my Willie photo,” Dozier told Metro. “We came out kind of slow — the brainteasers stumped a little bit. They beat us in that. But then we regrouped and showed resilience. We came back and we won something that I now cherish.”
As Dozier speaks, the photo of Colon seems to glare down at the rookie, almost as if he senses a hint of sarcasm.
The segment for “Jets Huddle” took about 30 minutes to shoot and was filmed two weeks ago at the team’s facility. The first question in the brainteaser section, for instance, was “How many animals did Moses bring on the ark?”
The answer, of course, is that Noah brought the animals on the ark, not Moses. The tight ends got that one right to get off to a strong start.
Pantale said the tight end team “lost fair and square.”
“I’d like an opportunity to redeem myself,” Pantale said. “I’m not going to beg for a photograph, I want to win one outright.”
His teammate on the show, the rookie Amaro, takes some blame in the dollar bill drop where the players are supposed to catch a dollar bill falling out of mid-air. He said the tight ends want a rematch, which sounds like a ratings bonanza in the works.
No one knew what the prize for winning the competition would be and according to Pantale, “if I did know it was his photo, I’d probably have tried a bit harder.”
But in some ways, perhaps the losers are the real winners in all of this.
“You get a picture or you don’t,” Amaro said. “I think the rules are that you have to keep it in your locker till the end of the season. Maybe it’s a little bittersweet. I wanted to win but I don’t want to have to have that photo every day — yeah, you know. So, yeah, maybe losing isn’t so bad after all.”
Follow Jets beat writer Kristian Dyer on Twitter @KristianRDyer.
