Jets rookie Omar Cooper Jr. has learned a lot in his first NFL training camp . . . just don't ask him to sing again

Omar Cooper Jr. had to stand up in a Jets offensive meeting and try a little stand-up. Welcome to the NFL, Rook.

Telling a joke in front of the room was one of Cooper’s rookie responsibilities. He remembered one that he saw on TikTok and gave it a shot.

“Where does a sheep go on vacation? The Baa-aa-aa-hamas.”

No one threw any tomatoes or eggs at him, but Cooper, who less than seven months earlier helped Indiana win a national championship, admitted his dad joke didn’t go well.

“It was pretty bad,” he told Newsday.

His singing may have been worse.

Another of Cooper’s rookie duties was to belt out a tune in front of the entire team. He chose “All My Life,” an R&B love ballad by K-Ci & JoJo. That wasn’t a hit either.

“It was horrible,” receiver Adonai Mitchell told Newsday. “I’m going to be honest: Omar’s a great guy, great football player, great person, great student of the game . . . horrible singer.”

The Jets didn’t draft Cooper with the No. 30 pick in the first round for his singing voice or sense of humor, though. They needed to improve their receiver room and liked Cooper’s physical style and ability to get yards after the catch.

Performing a nightclub act in front of teammates is just part of rookie life. All first-year players go through that transition, from Big Man on Campus to Low Man on the Totem Pole, and experience some form of rookie hazing.

“It’s like starting college again,” Cooper said. “It’s humbling.”

But he added, “It hasn’t been that bad. The worst thing I had to do was sing a song in front of the whole team.”

He also has to make sure the Jets’ veteran receivers have whatever water they want to drink and provide snacks for their room. After asking each guy what he wanted, Cooper went to the store, loaded up and brought in “a big box, a big load of stuff.”

Mitchell requested honey buns, Cooper got a box of them.

“He brought in good snacks,” Mitchell said. “That's what you love to see. But no, he's a ballplayer.”

Cooper will be part of the Jets’ receiver rotation. He’s had the usual rookie growing pains in training camp but is doing everything he can to prove himself on and off the field.

He stays after practice working with quarterbacks and catching balls from the JUGS machine, and he often seeks advice from the veteran receivers.

“These guys been around a long time. They’re here for a reason,” Cooper said. “It helps you to realize, OK, you may have had a great year in college, great few years in college, but now it's a whole other level. You got to take your game to another level, learn the game a lot more and grow in different ways that you didn't think you had to in college.”

During training camp, most practices started at 8:30 a.m. Cooper, who is staying in a hotel up the road, would wake up at 6 a.m., walk into the facility around 6:45  and leave 12 or 13 hours later. In between, it’s all football, almost the whole time.

There is pre-practice prep, practice itself and post-practice work. After lunch, Cooper is in meetings and film sessions with his position group, special teams and the entire offense.

He will rewatch practice with other skill players, participate in a walk-through and lift weights. After a break, there are more meetings and film and play installs.

Cooper’s day usually ends with rehab and recovery work. He likes sitting in a cold tub. Then he returns to his room and tries to unwind.

“I like to try to get my mind off football,” he said. “I give it a little break, and I like to play video games.”

Cooper isn’t really done with football, though.

He plays College Football '27 and Madden. He also hits the playbook and watches film for anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes. In OTAs and minicamp, when Cooper was learning everything, he spent more than three hours a day studying and doing film work away from the facility.

“It was kind of rough,” he said.

He sometimes went over plays with rookie tight end Kenyon Sadiq, his roommate in the spring. At night, he met with rookie quarterback Cade Klubnik to go through the script.

Cooper is much more comfortable now, but not entirely. He says he's hard on himself, and he often goes back and finds things he could have done differently or better.

According to his teammates, joke-telling is one of them.

“He’s a hard worker,” receiver Isaiah Williams told Newsday. “He’s a great teammate. His jokes are kind of shaky. Everything else, he’s holding it down.”

By Al Iannazzone

al.iannazzone@newsday.comAl_Iannazzone

Al Iannazzone covers the Jets for Newsday after spending nearly two decades on the NBA beat with Knicks and Nets.