Brian Costello opens the show breaking down the Jets’ loss to the Jaguars and whom the team may look to trade before the NFL trade deadline.
Jets radio voice Bob Wischusen joins to chat about the loss, the offensive line woes and the team’s trust in Sam Darnold.
Former longtime Jets special teams coach Mike Westhoff looks back at the great special teams units he coached, examines how special teams has changed and explains why Darnold is struggling.
On Adam Gase’s coaching against the Patriots:
Westhoff: If that happened to me in something I was doing, to be honest with you, I’d be humiliated. That was just ridiculous. You can’t block it that way. You can blame the quarterback all you want, but you weren’t giving him a chance. For him being an offensive coach and offensive coordinator, aside from his head coaching roles, that was very disappointing.
On Jets with Mark Sanchez:
Westhoff: That was an excellent offensive line. We led the league in rushing with that group. That’s what’s very disturbing to me to be honest when I go back to that was the formula that we had with Mark as our quarterback … who was a manageable quarterback — in my opinion, nothing more. He did a good, solid job. Everything else, we we were really good at. Were we a great team? No, we weren’t, but we were a good, solid team that can win. The key is you got to help your quarterback.
On the Jets coaching staff when he was there:
Westhoff: Jon Gruden came to visit us one time when he was doing his television career. He told me that the best NFL coaching staff he had ever seen was that group that we had. That’s quite a compliment.
On punting against Bill Belichick:
Westhoff: I used to love to play them. I knew they were going to be very conservative going against me because Bill Belichick was not going to let the special teams beat him. He wasn’t going to go out and have that part of the game win for him. I used to drive him crazy. I loved playing him. They would score, and I used to think, ‘Yeah, you scored, but now you got to kick off to Leon [Washington].’ Good luck. I knew it worked. I used to do things with the punt team and put guys in motion. He would be over there yelling, ‘Safe!’ I can watch him doing it. I was only doing it because I didn’t have a good punter. I didn’t have anybody that can punt. If I would have had Tom Morstead, the guy that I had down at the Saints for those years, please, we would have set records that could never be touched.
On special teams in today’s NFL:
Westhoff: It’s gone and it’s not coming back. It’s just not. Now that I’m retired, my years with the Saints I had a lot of fun, I really enjoyed it. That part was very disturbing to me and very frustrating. In my 32-year NFL career, my first 30 years, not counting field goals and PATs, I averaged 22 plays a game. The last year with the Saints I had seven. I’m not counting a touchback as a play. That’s really a shame. I don’t see one special teams highlight. I don’t see any. I use to see them every week. We see almost none of it. Sad is a good description of how I feel.
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