Jets Owner Says Holmes Will Return In 2012

Jets owner Woody Johnson said Thursday that controversial wide receiver Santonio Holmes will be back for the 2012 season.

Johnson, who met with Jets reporters for the first time since the season ended, insisted he is not just bringing back Holmes because his contract makes it hard to release him.

"He may be one of the best players we've ever had here," Johnson said. "You could look at his talent level and he's extraordinarily talented."

Johnson said he plans on meeting with Holmes and quarterback Mark Sanchez the next time they are at the team's headquarters. It has become increasingly clear since the end of the season that Holmes and Sanchez had issues between them that contributed to the Jets' 8-8 season.

"Absolutely I'm concerned, but I'm confident that it can be [repaired]," Johnson said of the relationship between the two. "They've won a lot of games together and one is good for the other. Santonio makes the quarterback a lot better and vice versa. They have a good reason to iron this thing out and I think he can do it."

Johnson expressed his confidence in Sanchez and said he did not think the team treated him differently than other teams treat their quarterbacks.

Running back LaDainian Tomlinson was the latest Jets player to say the team coddled Sanchez and said the locker room was the worst he'd been around. But the Jets' owner did not agree with the five-time Pro Bowler's assessment.

"I didn't feel the toxicity of the locker room," Johnson said. "I respect LaDainian at the highest level, but I don't think the whole locker room was toxic. I think there clearly were a few players that had conflicts. … You've got 53 individuals in that locker room. At any one time, there are going to be arguments and altercations and so on. Would you love to have total harmony? Maybe. But maybe it's good to have a little disharmony also. But they have to care about each other."

In an interview Wednesday night on Showtime's "Inside The NFL," Tomlinson called the relationship between Sanchez and Holmes "as bad as I've ever been around."

The situation reached its boiling point in the season-ending loss at Miami, where Holmes was benched late in the fourth quarter after sulking during the game and getting into an argument with some his teammates in the huddle.

One of his teammates called him "a cancer" after the game, saying Holmes "quit a long time ago."

Cutting Holmes would cost the Jets a significant sum against the salary cap, since the 27-year-old Super Bowl XLIII MVP signed a five-year, $45 million contract last summer, with $24 million guaranteed. Read more: NYPost