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Former Jets special team’s coach Mike Westhoff blasted the Jets for firing Bobby April on the team’s flagship radio station. Let’s take a closer look . . .
Not sure if y’all saw what Westhoff said on the team’s flagship station today.
“I don’t like the fact that only after one year you would fire Bobby April,” Westhoff said. “I know him, but it’s not like this is a friend of mine. I’m very disappointed in the fact that happened. Frankly, I’ll tell you exactly how I feel. I think it’s cowardice. And that’s a one-word synonym for the two-word phrase I really think.
“You can’t let Buffalo beat you twice if you think you’re good enough to play in the playoffs. You can’t do that. But anyways, what (firing April) says to me is: ‘Well, we’ve got to blame somebody. So, let’s blame these guys.’
“They didn’t do anything with special teams. They did nothing. Zero. So why would you think it’d be that good? You gave him one year and you didn’t do anything to help him out. What makes you think all of a sudden they’re going to be pretty good? It’s not going to happen.”
Can’t disagree with anything Westhoff said.
Surprised the Jets allow this on their flagship station, but that is another story. Clearly the Jets are big believers in the First Amendment. Most teams wouldn’t allow this on their flagship.
But I digress.
Mike Maccagnan is a very smart football man. For the life of me, I don’t understand why he neglected special team’s so much in his first season. It’s not like having a good special team’s unit is expensive. This is the cheapest part of football.
One problem is once the Jets picked Devin Smith, their best kick returner Walter Powell was immediately on the bubble, and he got cut, along with another good kick returner (and punt cover guy) – T.J. Graham. They were both essentially toast after the Smith pick, no matter what they did in practice.
So the Devin Smith pick, not only hurt the team’s kick return unit, but the punt coverage. Smith also probably hurt the chances of Saalim Hakim, one of the Jets best punt and kick cover guys, to hang around.
There was quite the trickle down affect connected to this pick.
Jeremy Kerley did a nice job of catching the ball this year, but he dances too much as a punt returner.
And you had Antonio Cromartie returning kicks for half the year, which was a really bad plan. Did he ever return a kick up the middle? Ever?
So the kick and punt returning situation wasn’t great. Not April’s fault. He doesn’t pick the players.
And the punt coverage wasn’t good either. One of the worst units in the league. Lorenzo Mauldin and Smith weren’t good on punt coverage, and contributed to the two returns for touchdowns.
Hey, perhaps Bowles and April didn’t jibe, and the coach want Keith Armstrong, his college teammate at Temple, somebody he’s more on the same page with.
Perhaps there is more to this than meets the eye. We aren’t in the meetings.
But it’s hard to argue with the sentiment that April got screwed.
January 8, 2016
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