Jets Special Teams Have Been Far From Special

Late in the third quarter of their loss to the New England Patriots on Sunday, the Jets trailed 13-3 and faced a fourth down at their own 25-yard line. They had to punt, and they needed a good one.They didn’t get it. Ben Graham sent the kick just 38 yards, and New England’s Kevin Faulk returned it 24 yards. That set up the Patriots in good field position, and after a short drive the Patriots kicked a field goal and increased their lead to 16-3.At first glance, Graham’s short punt, the Jets’ bad coverage and the Patriots’ subsequent field goal don’t seem like the most important plays of Sunday’s game. But they do point to what has been a serious problem for the Jets in the first two weeks of the season: They’re getting outplayed in every aspect of special teams.The biggest culprit has been Graham, and as a result, the Jets cut him yesterday. After a long career playing Australian football, Graham signed with the Jets as a 31-year-old rookie in 2005 and showed great promise, but he didn’t get any better in his second and third seasons, and at the start of his fourth, he appeared to have gotten worse. Graham punted four times on Sunday, and all four were line drives that didn’t give the Jets’ coverage unit enough time to get downfield. The Patriots returned three of Graham’s punts for a total of 53 yards; the one that wasn’t returned was a shank that went out of bounds after just 29 yards.The departure of Graham was a necessary move, given the way he has punted this season, but it won’t be sufficient for solving all the Jets’ special teams woes. Graham was far from the only problem in the kicking game, and the way the Jets have struggled on special teams raises the question of who, exactly, is coaching the unit. Kevin O’Dea, who was hired away from the Chicago Bears during the offseason, has the title of special teams coordinator. But just before the start of the season the Jets made the surprise announcement that Mike Westhoff, their special teams coordinator for the last seven seasons, would return after leaving the team in December for health reasons.At the press conference when he announced Westhoff’s return, head coach Eric Mangini said O’Dea would keep the title of special teams coordinator but that Westhoff would play an important part in shaping the special teams game plans. He referred to Westhoff and O’Dea working together as “the melding of two systems.”But so far it looks more like the clashing of two systems. The Jets’ special teams have looked disorganized on coverage and on returns, and even leaving aside what the Jets can’t really control, like the injury suffered by kicker Mike Nugent, it’s been a bad start to the season in the kicking game.Graham’s 29-yard punt wasn’t the only Jets kick that looked like a wounded duck on Sunday. The Jets got into the red zone on their first possession of the game on Sunday but came away with nothing to show for it when kicker Jay Feely missed a 31-yard field goal attempt wide to the right. Feely signed with the Jets last week to fill in for Nugent, who got hurt in the season opener.Combine the 31-yard field goal Feely missed and the 32-yard kick Nugent missed in Week 1, and the Jets have already missed as many kicks of less than 40 yards as they missed all of last year. Through two games of the NFL season, the Jets are the only team in the league with more missed field goals than made ones.Another problem is the return game. In recent years kickoff returns have been the strength of the Jets’ special teams; in 2007 Leon Washington averaged 27.5 yards a kickoff return and scored three touchdowns, and in 2006 Justin Miller averaged 28.3 yards a return and scored two touchdowns. Miller is injured and hasn’t played yet this season, and so far Washington has managed to return just two kickoffs, one for 24 yards and one for 10 yards.That’s mostly a result of the opposing kickers sending their kickoffs too deep into the end zone for Washington to return. But it also serves as a reminder of another respect in which the Jets’ special teams are getting outplayed: On kickoffs, the Jets’ kickers have just one touchback so far this year. Their opponents have five.If there’s any good news for the Jets, it’s that the nature of special teams is to be inconsistent, and a single play can dramatically change things: All it takes is for the Jets to return a kick for a touchdown, block a punt, or kick a 50-yard game-winning field goal, and all of a sudden the special teams don’t look like such a problem anymore.But if the Jets don’t get one of those big special teams plays soon, they’re going to need to make a big change — which might mean making Westhoff the special teams coordinator again. Which would mean Graham won’t be the only one losing his job.Mr. Smith is a writer for Fanhouse.com.

Jets Special Teams Have Been Far From Special

Jets Special Teams Have Been Far From Special

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