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Jets wide receiver Stephen Hill, selected in the 2012 NFL Draft, hopes to play a bigger role in the offense this season.

(Elsa/Getty Images)

Sanjay Lal keeps a yearly calendar in his binder marked, to the day, with what Stephen Hill has done and what he will need to learn.

Hill was arguably one of the most physically gifted players in the 2012 NFL Draft, taken in the second round by the Jets. He is a player who, Lal says, is more polished in technique but raw instinctively. A football mind-set needs to be fostered.

This is why there are special film sessions, workout plans and exercises. There are special meetings with quizzes, coverage recognition and route specificity.

"Reps and reps and reps," Lal, Jets wide receivers coach, said. "Then, he starts to get a feel for what you’re doing. The more he learns why, the more feel he’ll have."

But then there are the things Hill must do himself; obstacles he must overcome without the help of a coach or calendar. Last year, he encountered the typical potholes — nagging injuries, an overload of information in a maddening environment — and the not-so-typical. At one point last season a fan once obtained his personal cell phone number and harassed him, via text message, about his uneven play. Hill slogged through games injured, desperate to keep pace and shoulder more responsibility in a woeful offense. He disliked having to explain himself to reporters.

It amounted to a rookie season with flashes of both brilliance and frustration. Hill can smile now when he admits how he felt, like he was simply lost and running in space.

"It’s not hard, it’s just annoying," Hill told The Star-Ledger on a quiet afternoon last week in Florham Park. "We’re always on ESPN for something, and it was just a lot. It put pressure on learning, and then having to explain if I messed up, so that’s where most of the pressure was.

"It probably did throw me off during games, you’re just out there running. That’s what it felt like. I was out there running but I didn’t understand the whole football concept."

With the Jets searching for salvation in the passing game, Hill knows he will need to play a bigger role, especially with Santonio Holmes on the mend and no new rookies piping in from the draft. It is a responsibility that, after his trial run in 2012, he says he is ready for. He says he is bigger, stronger and faster than before. The strained LCL that preceded the knee surgery that ended his season in December has healed.

A week removed from his 22nd birthday, he is talking about catch and yardage goals for the first time. He says he’s pushing aside mere potential, and shooting for the Pro Bowl.

"Even Jerry Rice in his rookie year, he dropped balls and people booed him," said Hill, who caught 21 passes for 252 yards and three TDs in 11 games last season. "… I can’t hear what people think because this is my job. It’s not their job."

CAUGHT ON QUICKLY

Hill toyed with the Bills in his NFL debut, hauling in five passes for 89 yards and two touchdowns amid a 48-28 Jets victory.

For Lal, seeing this was an assurance that his plan was working. It was also a concern — with a player in development, too much early success could derail the finite technical work needed to bring Hill’s game along.

"It was good and bad," Lal said. "You love that it’s happening, but you tell the player — hey now, it’s not going to be like this next week. Buffalo played you in free access, now the rest of the league says ‘If we play Stephen in free access he’s going to kill us."

He told Hill: "There will be a plan next week to not let you catch five for 89 and two touchdowns."

Sure enough, Hill was held without a catch the following week against Pittsburgh. As a hamstring injury began to gnaw at his wary legs, he went without a grab in Week 3 as well, exiting the game early.

He caught one more touchdown pass on the season in a victory over the Colts, but the year was more memorable for a few untimely drops. When asked about one in particular — a crucial third down against New England where, Lal says, Hill simply took his eye off the ball — Hill said he was glad he was put in that situation despite being made to feel like he lost the game for his team.

"As the weeks went on, it got worse and worse," Hill said. "I got injured and that set me back, too. I just took that whole year as a learning experience."

In the eyes of his coaches, it was an internship of sorts. Lal treats Hill’s case similar to that of Darrius Heyward-Bey, another high-talent project he undertook at his previous stop as Oakland’s receivers coach. When the Raiders drafted the speedy receiver, Lal presented a step-by-step plan not unlike the one Hill is on now.

Heyward-Bey’s trajectory under Lal looked like this:

• Year 1: 9 catches, 124 yards, 1 touchdown

• Year 2: 26 catches, 366 yards, 1 touchdown

•Year 3: 64 catches, 975 yards, 4 touchdowns

Lal hopes sticking by the plan will yield similar results for Hill.

"We had a systematic plan," Lal said. "You saw the progression, and that was really enjoyable. Honestly, it hurt to not continue that. It hurt to leave (Oakland). Every exit meeting, we were talking about the next step."

A LEARNING CURVE

Hill used to hate the complements.

During the pre-Draft workout process, scouts and executives would treat Hill like a fourth-grader learning linear algebra. Any progress is worth celebrating.

The stigma of coming from an option offense in college (Georgia Tech) left him with the impression that teams thought he wasn’t intelligent, that he hadn’t been playing the game his entire life.

"I didn’t like the way that, when people saw me run a route, they congratulated me," Hill said. "I’ve been running routes since high school, I just went to a different college.

"We ran a lot of routes in high school. I played with Geno Smith in a high school all-star game and we ran all the NFL routes. Like, it’s the same routes. I didn’t like that. Just tell me what to do."

Last year only stoked the fire. He went from being the project player to the receiver without hands. The "drops guy."

It led him to delete his Twitter account, where piles of mentions buzzed straight to his phone telling him he wasn’t good enough. He took down his Instagram soon after that. He changed his cell phone number when a fan began harassing him, telling him it was Hill’s fault the team wasn’t better.

"It was weird, I don’t know how he got my number," Hill said. "Then Twitter got bad, for me. It just got so bad I deleted everything."

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He knew the coaches had confidence in him, as did his teammates. But as a 21-year-old rookie, the world is disturbingly small when seemingly every ring on his phone is a friend calling to ask why he was being trashed on television, or when every highlight is a reel of footballs whistling through his hands or miscommunication on routes.

He gave himself some time in the offseason to return home to Georgia and tune it all out. He knew that expectations — the nutty fans, the press, the analysts — would never stop spinning around him. He would have to handle it.

Soon after he began his rehab, his head coach put the league, and Hill, on notice.

"It needs to be a lot better than year one because Stephen is a guy that has a lot of ability," Ryan said of Hill in February at the NFL Scouting Combine. "His ceiling is really high. Like many guys as rookies, many receivers coming into this league as rookies, a lot of inconsistency. Some weeks he was outstanding, other weeks not so much, but I expect him to improve by leaps and bounds going into year two."

READY TO BREAK OUT

Last week, Hill entered the room fresh from a practice clutching a bottled workout drink.

He says he is more relaxed now, and cannot wait to operate in new offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg’s offense, an aggressive system that racks up yardage in the passing game and unleashes All-Pro wideouts.

"We gotta get that whole quarterback situation handled," Hill said, laughing about his team’s five-way battle for the starting QB job. "We have to get that handled first before we start throwing it really deep."

Lal instructed Hill to begin watching more tape of the great wide receivers to prepare — see how every move Rice makes has a purpose, how Andre Johnson controls and adjusts his body, how Anquan Boldin blocks downfield.

He tells Hill that he can have all those tools and combine them into one receiver.

Hill takes that as a compliment, and not as a burden anymore.

"Stephen is so gifted," Lal said. "He can be whoever he wants to be."