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How many position coaches aren’t retained, following a season where three of their five starters went to the Pro Bowl?
Three of the five starters on the Jets offensive line – left tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson, center Nick Mangold and right guard Brandon Moore will start for the AFC in Pro Bowl, taking place on Sunday in Hawaii.
All these men were coached this year by Bill Callahan, who the Jets let walk after the season, with no fight.
How strange is that? An offensive line coach mentors three players, who end up in the Pro Bowl and the team has no interest in retaining him.
Callahan is a tremendous offensive line coach, and a great hire by the Dallas Cowboys.
But with that being said, the Jets did replace Callahan with another one of the league’s best offensive line coaches Tony Sparano (with assistance from Dave DeGuglielmo).
“I think the Jets made a great hire,” and unnamed league executive said in Pro Football Weekly. “Tony Sparano is one of the best offensive line coaches in football. The Jets offensive will be a lot better next year for that reason alone – mark my words.”
While Sparano looks like a terrific hire, the Jets showing no interest in bringing Callahan back was bizarre, but it’s clear what was at work here.
The Jets desperately want their pick of Mark Sanchez to work out, so they they needed straw men on the offensive line side of the ball, and those guys turned out to be Brian Schottenheimer, Callahan and Henry Ellard.
Rex said Brian’s offense was too wordy. Also, how often did we hear that Sanchez wasn’t protected well enough (Callahan) and how wide receivers were running the wrong routes (Ellard). Also, Ellard was clearly the fall guy for Santonio Holmes erratic behavior.
I’m not buying all this stuff, just painting a picture.
So now these straw men are all gone.
The Jets want to make this work out with Sanchez come hell or high water, and now all those problems, in their minds, are going to be fixed.
We will see how this works out . . .
But the unnamed executive also took a shot at Callahan.
“I’ve been around Bill,” said the executive. “He does not know personnel. You can tell from how he recruited at Nebraska.”
Maybe that is true on some level, but it’s irrelevant in relation to his work with the Jets; he didn’t make personnel decisions.
And honestly, the one decision he probably had the most imput on was on a player he coached at Nebraska, guard Matt Slauson, who turned into a sixth round steal for the Jets . . .
One note on the Super Bowl – Jets fans, and every other New England opponent, knows how difficult tight end Rob Gronkowski is to cover.
While Bill Belichick wasn’t forthright about Rob’s ankle injury against Baltimore, Gordie Gronkowski was. He told a Buffalo reporter that his son has a high ankle sprain.
That is huge news. He’s not healing from a high ankle sprain in two weeks, no matter how much treatment he gets.
It’s a 6-8 week injury at the very least. It’s going to hurt his ability cut and change directions in the Super Bowl, a big part of this game.
This injury could have a big impact on the Super Bowl.
(Premium will return by Monday night at 8 pm. Enjoy your Sunday. I will be on Sirius NFL Radio on Sunday night at 10 pm doing a show with Howard Balzer.)