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Cortland – A few of the items covered today include special team’s concerns . . . payola journalism . . . something Ducasse needs to work on before he can start . . . a bad weather prediction and much more . . .
Mike Westhoff seems a little uncertain of what he has on his special team’s cover unit.
“There is a smaller pool and a bigger challenge,” said Westhoff.
Gone are players like Wallace Wright and Marques Murrell, two core special teamers. Some other guys must step up. Kenwin Cummings and Marquice Cole should help fill the void.
Westhoff feels the jury is still out on whether David Clowney can be an effective gunner.
“I hope he can do it, but it’s up to him,” said Westhoff. “We know he has the talent, but we haven’t seen it.”
. . .
If Clowney does earn the gunner job, can you imagine what he and Brad Smith, who calls the signals on the punt team, could do on a fake punt? Clowney would be a excellent receiving target on a fake . . .
Cole looks like he has the potential to be a good gunner. He has 4.3 speed and is very tough . . .
The Jets had a special team’s practice in the afternoon, but Westhoff gave punter Steve Weatherford a respite, letting him sit out this session. So all the punting was done by T.J. Conley, who kicked the heck out of the ball.
But talking to Westhoff, you do get the sense he’s leaning towards going with Weatherford. Westy loves veteran punters . . .
Radio row at Jets camp was quite crowded today with stations from around the country in town?
Why would radio stations from outside New York do remotes from Jets camp? That is a very unusual. Well you hear HBO flew them in, took care of their travel expenses, to help promote Hard Knocks.
Talk about payola journalism . . .
Watching Vlad Ducasse run, it looks like his legs are really, really sore. He’s taking a lot of reps, with both the first and second team. He looked like he was dragging a little out there.
Like I’ve mentioned before, it looks like Matt Slauson is ahead in the battle for the left guard job.
From what I hear, something Ducasse needs to work on is patience. Sometimes he’s too aggressive moving forward, and this puts him in bad positions that defensive linemen can take advantage of.
And you know who has been coaching Ducasse more than any other player – Slauson. That is pretty selfless for a guy to help out his chief competition to this degree . . .
Jeff Cumberland continues to do a terrific job as a receiver, but the blocking needs a lot of work.
After one poor block, his position coach ripped into him and an f-bomb or two was dropped . . .
There has been so much talk in camp about all the work Mark Sanchez is doing on his cadence.
But in the afternoon practice, Mike Westhoff was having a punt cadence workshop with his players. We don’t talk as much about punt cadence, but clearly if you can get the opposing punt team to jump off-sides, this could lead to a first down and keeping possession . . .
Watching Mark Brunell practice, you would never know he’s 39. He still has really quick feet and his arm is more than adequate.
“He can spin it,” said Mark Sanchez . . .
While they did it for safety reasons, cutting off the morning practice an hour early this morning due to a lightening warning turned out to be a mistake. The lightening never came, so the Jets missed out on an hour of practice time and quality reps for young players. But clearly you don’t mess around with lightening.
Since the afternoon practice was special teams, some observers thought that the Jets might make the PM session a regular practice, but Rex decided against it. When drawing up the training camp practice schedule, the coaches factor in the potential for a few missed sessions . . .
