Jets special-teams coach Mike Westhoff has retired. An acceptable synonym also could be “escaped.”
Westhoff appeared on WQAM in Miami on Friday to discuss the situation in New York. And he had plenty to say. About Tim Tebow.
“It was a mess,” Westhoff told Joe Rose. “It was an absolute mess. You can say it however else you want, it was really a mess. I was very, very disappointed. There are things that Tim Tebow, as an NFL quarterback, he’s very limited in some things. If you throw him in the middle of a drop-back passing offense, he will look very, very average at best. But if you incorporate him in different facets of your offense, I think he can be a factor. That’s what I felt we were going to do, but we never did it.
Westhoff said he thought the Jets would use Tebow as an H-back, tight end, halfback, and fullback, and then unexpectedly line him up at quarterback. “That’s what I was expecting to see, and we didn’t do it,” Westhoff said.
Westhoff said his special-teams role with Tebow was expected to be “one percent” of Tebow’s total package. “It was supposed to only be a fraction, and it ended up being his only role,” Westhoff said.
“I don’t think anyone’s ever really answered that question,” Westhoff said. “Why didn’t we do it? I honestly don’t know. I know we didn’t practice it. We didn’t practice it in training camp. We were gonna unveil it. Well, I’m still waiting for the unveiling.”
We all are. Including Tebow
“It was a distraction, and really a shame,” Westhoff said.
He’s right. Regardless of whether you like or don’t like Tebow as a player or a person, he led the Broncos to the final eight in 2011. And he has an uncanny ability to make things happen, especially when everything around him falls apart. After one year with the Jets, all of that has been forgotten -- to the point where it’s looking unlikely that he’ll get a chance in 2013 or beyond to do what he did in Denver last year.
In a league where so many teams have so many bad quarterbacks, it’s amazing to think that no one will embrace what Tebow does and build an offense around it, especially since so many other teams are building offenses around quarterbacks with skills that don’t fit neatly within the mold of a drop-back passer.