The subject was LaRon Landry, the Jets' recent acquisition at strong safety. Jim Leonhard, who played the position for three years, said the addition of Landry "made our team better." He caught himself.

"It made the Jets better," Leonhard said Saturday during an autograph signing at a Verizon store in Lake Grove, N.Y. "I guess it's not my team anymore."

Leonhard, an unrestricted free agent still rehabbing from major knee surgery in December, still hopes to return to the Jets. He's had "some conversations" with them, and other teams he didn't name, but they didn't go very far. He's in the worst kind of limbo for a football player -- no contract, trying to get healthy.

"It's hard right now because there's only so much you can talk about when you know you're not 100 percent and everyone else knows you're not 100 percent," he said.

Leonhard is confident he'll be healthy for training camp in three months and, despite the Landry signing, he still thinks there's room for him. Landry and Eric Smith are the only two experienced safeties under contract. There's a good chance they will draft a safety, perhaps even in the first round, Alabama's Mark Barron.

Leonhard, rehabbing at Wisconsion, his alma mater, still hasn't been cleared to start running, but he began jumping and light cutting. Two weeks ago, he started running on an Alter-G treadmill -- an anti-gravity machine that reduces the stress on the legs and joints.

For the second straight offseason, Leonhard is rehabbing a serious injury. This, a torn patellar tendon, is tougher than his surgically repaired broken leg, he admitted. Remarkably, he was 100 percent for training camp last July, only seven months after the fracture. Both injures occurred in December.

"Honestly," he said, "there's no worse timing than I had."

The Jets have said they will take a wait-and-see approach with Leonhard, a cerebral player who was missed greatly in the secondary. Leonhard, confident in his value to the team, said he's not afraid to come into camp and compete for a job. He's planning to wait until he's closer to 100 percent before working out for interested teams.

Like a lot of Jets, Leonhard is curious to see how things play out with Tim Tebow.

"It's tough because you know they wanted to bring in some competition for Mark (Sanchez), to push him," he said. "They obviously did that. The guy's a proven winner at every level of football he's ever played, so that can only help your football team. It's just going to be interesting to see how they go about the situation.

"They're talking about getting him 20 reps a game. Obviously, you talk to most starting quarterbacks, they don't want that. It's all about rhythm and feel. When you add that to the mix, it's going to take a special guy to handle that situation. Mark could be that guy. It's going to be interesting."

Asked if Sanchez needed someone to push him, Leonhard said, "Everyone needs a push. Mark has been inconsistent. He's played amazing at times and he's struggled, which is the case for the majority of the players in the NFL. But when you're the starting quarterback for the New York Jets, there's a lot of pressure."