George Fant talks Year Up partnership, defense and playing both tackle positions
Recently, many members of the NFL took part in “My Cause My Cleats”, where players wore customized cleats that show support and raise awareness for their favorite organizations.
New York Jets offensive tackle George Fant was one of those players in Week 13. Fant’s organization is called Year Up, “a tuition-free job training program that helps young adults between the ages of 18-29 across the nation receive professional and career training.”
Fant sat down with Jets Wire to discuss his connection with Year Up and what it means to him and the potential of the organization.
Year Up is a nonprofit who focuses on young adults and youth and helping them get job training. It is free job training and helping them get placements in internships at really good companies. And it was just one of those, one of those deals where, for myself, I just felt that it was a good connection for myself and my foundation because that’s what we like to do. We like to help our youth in our community and help them be able to grow and build their lives. And I thought that that was just a great opportunity to team up with a nonprofit who has the same kind of outlook on life that we have and kind of the same values as well. So that was kind of the main reasons why we wanted to partner up with Year Up.
Fant said he loves the things they’re doing and how they help people and build more partnerships. Some of those partnerships and internships include Bank of America, Uber, Sony and Buzzfeed.
I’m just happy to partner with them and do anything with them. We’re definitely going to do some more stuff with them here in their future. We love to see what they’re doing with the youth in our community and the young youth in our community. So definitely looking forward to doing more partnerships with Year Up.
Fant also shared his thoughts on the Jets defense and getting to face that defense every day in practice.
You got Sauce and D.J. man, they’re playing lights out right now. Our defense in general is just I think one of the top defenses in NFL right now. They’re putting their work in every single day. I knew that this year, this summer, we practiced against them every day in training camp thatwe had one of the best defensive lines and obviously one of the best defenses in the NFL. And then, you throw Quinnen Williams in there who I think should be in the running for defensive player of the year as well. That dude’s a beast man. Like, he’s unblockable. So those dudes are just holding it down. And I know for us in offense, we’re just trying to make sure we do our part for the defense and be able to hold it down for them. So yeah, that’s definitely one of the best defenses in the NFL right now. They’re ready to go knock these games out and win these next ones.
Fant also shared some insight on the differences between playing left and right tackle following his shifting during training camp due to the injury to Mekhi Becton and the signing of Duane Brown.
Yeah, it’s obviously it is not easy to do that, man. It’s one of those situations where I would just kind of say that it the toughest part of it is just your body. Your strengths your dominant hand. The way that you have to be able to set at certain angles or get to certain point to make contact. It’s a whole lot of different things that go with making that switch from left to right. I’m blessed to be able to do it because I’ve been in different situations where I’ve had to do it. So just being able to be happy to be able to do both positions and to be able to do whatever the team needs me to do, to go out there and get a win. So, it is not easy, but I’m willing to do it.
And again, if you want to check out Fant’s partnership, visit YearUp.org for more information.
