The Jets are excited about their prospects for the new campaign. They reached the AFC championship game last season and have been reloading for a Super Bowl run. They made two bold moves in the off-season -- bringing in Santonio Holmes, the troubled but talented wide receiver, and Antonio Cromartie, a great cornerback talent whose work ethic was questioned last season. All the Jets need now are some young, ready-to-contribute players with the right character in next week's draft. In the quest for the perfect player, Jets scouts visited 232 colleges, evaluated 1,346 players and wrote 5,600 reports. They interviewed 366 players, either at the combine or here at their facility. How many of those players had the right character? Character is the NFL's new multiheaded buzzword. 'He is a character guy' or 'He has character issues' have become part of the league's lexicon. A player who is perceived as having good character will move up the draft ladder, and a player perceived as a character risk will move down and lose millions of dollars. For Joey Clinkscales, the Jets' vice president for college scouting, character is less a constant than a quality and is determined by circumstances. 'If you're in the locker room where there are a lot of bad guys in the locker room, then if you bring a player into that atmosphere, he's going to act accordingly,' he said. 'If you bring a guy into the locker room that has a lot of players that toe the line, then if that guy has anything to him, he toes the line as well. So character depends on the situation.' Terry Bradway, the Jets' senior personnel director, divided character into two parts: personal character and football character. 'Football character is in terms of work ethic and spending time, preparation, study, doing all those extra things that you want to do to become a player,' Bradway said. 'Then from the personal standpoint, it's the off-the-field stuff.' Mike Tannenbaum, the Jets' general manager, who works in a relative Ivory Tower, was more philosophical. 'I believe there is a lot of wisdom in the saying, Who you are in life is how you treat the waiter and waitress,' he said. 'Who you are is when no one is looking.' The reality is that in the NFL character is determined on a sliding scale based on talent and need. In this equation, one team's character problem is another team's prayer. Last Sunday, the Jets traded a fifth-round draft choice for Holmes, the most valuable player of the 2009 Super Bowl. He was benched earlier that season after he was charged with possession of marijuana. Last month, a woman filed a lawsuit against Holmes, alleging that he threw a glass at her in an Orlando, Fla., nightclub, resulting in a cut above her eye. Holmes also faced domestic violence charges in 2006, charges that were dropped. After he was traded, the NFL announced that Holmes would be suspended for the first four games of the season because of a violation of the league's substance-abuse policy. At first glance, Holmes is not what you would call a character guy, but the Jets are ecstatic to have him. 'We're going into this with our eyes wide open,' Tannenbaum said. 'Will it work? There are no guarantees. Time will bear us out whether they were the right decisions or wrong decisions. I think our locker room and environment is filled with great people on and off the field.' Domestic violence and violence against women should be a deal-killer for any prospective rookie with at least two incidents of battery on his resume. In the NFL, that is not necessarily the case. Again, there is that sliding scale. What type of risk? 'Is it a lot of guaranteed money?' Tannenbaum said. 'Is it a premium pick, not a premium pick? Is it an aberrational incident? Where did something happen to cause it, or are there a lot of things?' For the past few years, Pittsburgh's Ben Roethlisberger was generally hailed as a character guy when it came to football. He played with daring and gusto and often willed his team to win. From what we knew about Roethlisberger off the field, he was a fun loving character. Now, of course, a troubling picture has emerged based on details of incidents involving two women. Far from having character, or even being a character, Roethlisberger is beginning to look like a predator with a possible drinking problem. But he is a talented predator who will be playing quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers this season. There's that sliding scale again. What is character? In the NFL, character is defined by what you need. 