On the day of his introductory press conference, Jets general manager Joe Douglas laid out what he is looking for in players.

“We’re going to find passionate people that love the game of football, that hate losing more than they love winning, that love to prepare, that love to practice, that love to compete,” Douglas said last June.

Now, he gets to draft some of those.

Character is a buzzword heading into Thursday’s NFL draft. Prospects are dissected in every way possible and one big task is trying to figure out their character. In recent years, the Jets have drafted some character risks and been burned by them. Jachai Polite, ArDarius Stewart and Dylan Donahue are just a few of the players they selected who other teams had off their boards completely. None of them worked out.

Douglas has vowed to take a different approach. Character is one of the core principles he has stressed to his personnel department when looking at prospects. Coach Adam Gase is in lockstep with Douglas when it comes to this. It is the first time since the Eric Mangini/Mike Tannenbaum regime that the Jets have put this much emphasis on character.

The challenge for Douglas and his staff has been determining that character without having in-person visits. Everything since mid-March has been done virtually. The Jets had a few private workouts before the lockdown and interviewed players at the all-star games in January and at the NFL Scouting Combine in February. But they have not had the traditional top-30 visits when they get to spend parts of two days with prospects, go to dinner with them, test them in the classroom. Instead, it has all been via video conferences.

“I think you really have to trust in the work our guys have done since August going into the schools,” Douglas said this week. “Our scouts are our boots on the ground, they’re our recon team, they’re out front gaining as much information and knowledge about players as possible. These guys do a great job going into schools and getting great information on players on their makeup and personalities, their football character. We lean on that information every year, especially this year.”

Scouts can rely on their sources at schools, but sometimes those sources are not completely reliable. Tannenbaum used to talk to the limousine drivers who picked up the prospects at the airport to see how the individual players treated them. Little tricks like that won’t exist this year.

Douglas said the Jets have gotten a lot out of the video calls.

“I think our coaching staff has done a tremendous job in terms of using the technology that they’ve been given to get to know these players the best they can through the last few weeks in these video conferencing calls,” Douglas said. “I’ve been able to sit in on a majority of them and they have been outstanding.”

For the Jets, character won’t mean crossing off every player who has ever gotten into trouble. Douglas is trying to build a football team, not a church choir. He differentiates between character and football character. The latter is about how important football is to a player, how much he loves it. Players such as Lawrence Taylor and Warren Sapp were not angels, but their love of football helped them be great despite any off-field issues.

For Douglas, he must determine whether a transgression is an isolated incident or a red flag for future behavior.

Louisville tackle Mekhi Becton is one such player. It was revealed that Becton failed a drug test at the scouting combine. He is a player on the Jets’ radar. Douglas was asked about Becton this week and it sounded like one failed test would not scare the Jets off.

“In years past, it was a little bit different,” Douglas said. “When a player failed a combine drug test, he was automatically put into the program. Obviously, those things have changed in the new [collective bargaining agreement]. As far as the actual test, we’ve all made mistakes in life. I think what you try to vet in situations like that is the timing of that mistake, digging into the behavioral aspect, the decision-making aspect of exactly why that mistake was made.”

Douglas said his staff is not done looking at prospects’ past and won’t be until the final minute.

“Our board isn’t going to be set until Thursday,” he said. “It’s fluid. Our guys are going to be digging on background until Thursday night. We’re going to do a lot of work on a lot of players up until that time frame.”