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The Jets officially announced on Thursday
that special team’s coordinator Brant Boyer has been retained. We have all known this for a while, but they made it official. This stuff gets leaked to insiders from agents early, but obviously it’s not official until the paperwork is signed.
Keeping Boyer made sense for a few reasons. First off, he’s a good coach who’s very similar to Robert Saleh in terms of passion, teaching-ability and connecting with players. Like Saleh, Boyer is a firebrand on the field. Secondly, this will/has helped a great deal from a player personnel evaluation standpoint.
Offensives coaches coach offensive players, defensive coaches coach defensive players, but special team’s coaches basically coach everybody, sans a perhaps a few guys, like the starting quarterback. Even the starting linemen play on the field goal protection team.
Yes, Joe Douglas runs the personnel department, but he doesn’t coach the players. Boyer coaches players, and since he was retained, he will help Saleh (and Douglas) a tremendous amount with insight on a big chunk of the roster in terms of attitudes, work-ethics, motors, intelligence and so forth. This will be very helpful for the new regime.
But the tough part for Boyer is he wasn’t able to keep his long-time friend, Jeff Hammerschidt, as the assistant special team’s coach. They go way, way back to their playing days at the University of Arizona.
Hammerschidt is a good coach, but NFL coaching positions are precious, worth their weight in gold, and Saleh had his eyes on a couple of other people to assistant on special teams – Michael Ghobrial and Leon Washington.
While Washington will play a key role, Ghobrial is essentially the coach replacing Hammerschmidt.
Ghobrial was the special team’s coach at Washington State last year, and the previous two years at the University of Hawaii. He followed Nick Rolovich from Hawaii to Washington State.
Ghobrial, a former UCLA DE, was clearly somebody that Saleh liked in the interview process, but also wanted to give a well-deserved break to, as somebody who also went through the Bill Walsh Minority Fellowship program, like Saleh.
And he’s also extremely, extremely bright.
He received two degrees from UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in history in 2011 and master’s degree in social science and comparative education in 2014, While working on his masters at UCLA, he worked as a quality control in 2011, and then assisted with special teams during the 2012-13 seasons.
As for Washington, that was a good culture hire. It’s important for the Jets to improve their relationship with more players from the past, and this kind of move helps. Washington was a very good player for the Jets, who’s time with the team didn’t end well, which was common with some of the former regimes. This guy should have been a Jet for life. Great person and terrific player.
And from a football standpoint, he will be a huge asset on special teams, working, in part, with the Jets’ kick returners, an area the Jets need to see great improvement.
February 12, 2021
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