Brief Jets news 5 / 20/ 08

[Kentucky Jet]

Jets sign long snapper- ERIK BOLAND, NEWSDAY

The Jets this afternoon signed long-snapper Nick Jarvis, a tryout invitee to the team's rookie minicamp earlier this month. Jarvis, a high school quarterback and tight end, was Wake Forest's long-snapper the last four years and participated in the Hula Bowl and the East-West Shrine Game. The Jets do not disclose injury information but 32-year-old James Dearth, the current long-snapper who has appeared in 112 consecutive games, seemed limited in last week's OTA practice session that was open to the media.

The Jets contacted the 6-3, 271-pound Jarvis shortly after the draft and, in a story that appeared May 9 in his hometown newspaper, The Dispatch (Lexington, N.C.), Jarvis said, "It could be an opportunity for me. I know they don't want to go too long without working on special teams. They don't know if he'll be back and he is 32 years old."

Posted by Erik Boland on May 19, 2008 5:33 PM | Permalink

[Kentucky Jet]

Keller, Manningham Ready To Make Impact in N.Y.

Football

By ERIC EDHOLM

May 19, 2008

Paul Sancya/AP

Paul Sancya

Tom Strattman/AP

Tom Strattman

LOS ANGELES

[Kentucky Jet]

Punter can use hands, but seeks job with foot

By Jane McManus

The Journal News

[Kentucky Jet]

A condensed version of Clemens presser

By Craig Thomas

Posted May 17, 2008

Q)Do you believe you are the number one quarterback right now?

Clemens: It

[Kentucky Jet]

A Vols Fan Speaks on Ainge

Posted on May 17th, 2008 by Bassett

Some of my good friends are rabid Tennessee Volunteers fans, and I had the chance to talk to one of them about new Jet Erik Ainge, and what he thinks of his former Quarterback. My buddy Jason

[Kentucky Jet]

Sports of The Times;

Today's Jets Need a Link to the Jets Who Made It All the Way

By DAVE ANDERSON

Published: July 16, 2006

FOR nearly four decades, the Super Bowl III Jets have represented the only glorious moment of a pro football franchise mostly muddied in frustration, if not despair.

Since that 1968 team justified the American Football League's existence with a 16-7 upset of the Baltimore Colts and altered the history of the National Football League, the Jets have never been closer to another Super Bowl than two losses in American Football Conference championship games, at Miami in the 1982 season and at Denver in the 1998 campaign.

Of the other pro football franchises that existed in 1968, all but four -- the Cardinals, the Lions, the Browns and the Saints -- have either won or reached a Super Bowl, while the Jets have remained on a treadmill.

You would think that, through so many dismal years, the Jets organization would have often extolled, if not exploited, those Super Bowl III champions. Yes, the team retired Joe Namath's No. 12 and Don Maynard's No. 13. A stadium banner honors Coach Weeb Ewbank's bronze bust in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And the Jets hired Namath to stump for the West Side stadium that never materialized. But what about all those other players with Super Bowl III rings?

''Our 25th anniversary was the last time any of us got a Christmas card from the team,'' tight end Pete Lammons said.

Lammons was referring to their official reunion late in the 1993 season, but since then it's almost as if the Jets organization has disowned its only championship team.

''Tradition, that's the core of a sports franchise,'' defensive end Gerry Philbin said. ''But with the Jets, there's no tradition.''

With the Super Bowl III trophy perched in the current Jets locker room, you would think the organization would want the current players to mix with the men who earned it. Instead, it's as if those Super Bowl III Jets don't exist, as if Philbin never had 64 1/2 sacks, still third on the Jets' career list, or Lammons never caught one of Namath's three touchdown passes in the 27-23 victory over Oakland in the A.F.L. championship game at Shea Stadium.

''I've never met Woody Johnson,'' Philbin said, referring to the Jets' owner.

To the Jets' shame, the only time the Super Bowl III players get together officially is at the Freedom House-Larry Grantham Celebrity Golf Classic, as they did here Thursday at Fiddler's Elbow Country Club in the New Jersey farmland, about as far from the Jets' complex on Long Island as you can get in the metropolitan area.

Freedom House, founded in 1986 and based in Glen Gardner, N.J., is a nonprofit substance-abuse center that has treated more than 1,000 men and women in a halfway-house setting.

The connection with the Jets developed when the Freedom House chief executive, Fred Reihl, happened to meet Grantham, the outside linebacker who was the Super Bowl III Jets' defensive captain, at an Alcoholics Anonymous convention in 1998 in Kansas City, Mo. Reihl asked if Grantham could round up his old teammates to enhance Freedom House's annual charity golf tournament.

''This was our ninth,'' said Grantham, who added proudly that he had not had a drink in 20 years. ''The guys love it.''

Fifteen of those Super Bowl III Jets were here Thursday: Al Atkinson, Bill Baird, Ralph Baker, Emerson Boozer, Mike D'Amato, Cornell Gordon, Winston Hill, Bill Mathis, Carl McAdams, Babe Parilli, Paul Rochester and Mike Stromberg, as well as Grantham, Philbin and Lammons.

''Joe was here in 2003,'' Grantham said, referring to Namath, ''but his football camp in Massachusetts keeps conflicting with us.''

Congratulations to Freedom House for taking advantage of what the Jets have mostly ignored: putting those Super Bowl III players on display, if not hiring their expertise.

''They should've put Emerson Boozer in the front office as a players liaison,'' Philbin said. ''Wellington Mara and the Giants always tried to do things like that.''

Boozer, whose 64 career touchdowns are still the most for a Jets running back, was never far away. Now retired, he was the director of parks and recreation in Huntington, N.Y., for more than 30 years, but he always monitored the Jets. He agreed with installing Mike Tannenbaum as general manager and hiring Eric Mangini as coach after last season's 4-12 record eased Coach Herman Edwards's departure to the Chiefs.

''They had to shake it up, turn everything upside down,'' Boozer said. ''I thought Herm had lost control of the team.''

Atkinson, a thinking-man's middle linebacker, bemoaned the absence in the Jets' front office of someone like Sonny Werblin, who in 1965 signed Namath to a record $427,000 contract. He also wondered why the Jets continued to depend on quarterback Chad Pennington.

''The last three years,'' Atkinson said, ''they've tried to live and die with one quarterback coming off shoulder surgery.''

But that's to be expected of a Jets franchise that, for nearly 40 years, has occasionally lived but mostly died with its neglected Super Bowl III champions.

[Kentucky Jet]

Jets coach doesn't back up Walsh

Ex-Patriots coach refutes assertions about Rams requests

SportsTicker

Matt Walsh spoke to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on Tuesday but has not had all his assertions supported. (AP)

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Matt Walsh is having trouble finding people to corroborate his latest allegations in the spying controversy.

Former New England Patriots assistant coach Brian Daboll refuted Walsh's claim that he quizzed him about certain formations the St. Louis Rams were running one day before the Super Bowl in 2002.

In a second interview with the NFL's security department, Daboll -- now an assistant coach with the New York Jets -- said he has "no recollection of a conversation with Matt Walsh about the Rams' walkthrough practice."

A former New England Patriots video assistant, Walsh met with Commissioner Roger Goodell on Tuesday about the team's videotaping practices and said he had no knowledge of the Rams' walkthrough being taped -- contradicting a story by the Boston Herald on Feb. 2.

The Herald offered an apology for the story on Wednesday, saying it now knows the story was false and that no tape of the walkthrough existed.

Following his meeting with Walsh, Goodell said no new evidence existed and admitted that he likely will not levy further penalties on the Patriots.

"As I stand before you today, having met with Matt Walsh and 50 other people, I don't know where else I would turn," Goodell said. "I reserve the right -- if new information comes up, I will look at it."

That new information appeared to come from Walsh during the meeting with Goodell. According to NFL Outside Counsel Gregg Levy, Walsh said he ran into Daboll after the walkthrough.

"Walsh told him two things," Levy said. "One, that while he was there in the building, he saw [Rams running back Marshall] Faulk being used on a kick return during the walkthrough, which apparently was something that Walsh didn't anticipate. Two, Daboll asked Walsh about offensive formations and particularly about how the tight ends were used in the formations."

While Daboll disavowed knowledge of that conversation, the NFL on Thursday released a statement that said even if Daboll did speak with Walsh, "It would not be a violation of NFL rules."

"Matt Walsh was authorized to be in the stadium to perform his job duties along with other members of the Patriots' video department, members of the Rams' video department, and other people preparing for the Super Bowl," the statement read.

Walsh told Goodell he was wearing Patriots garb as the Rams went through their final preparations, a notion dismissed by former St. Louis head coach Mike Martz.

Now an offensive coordinator with the San Francisco 49ers, Martz issued a statement Thursday in which he was skeptical of Walsh's claims.

"I was stunned at Matt Walsh's allegation that he was on the sideline in New England Patriots apparel during our walkthrough," Martz said in the statement. "I find that insulting, disturbing and a slap in the face to both our team security and NFL security, who both do outstanding jobs. I promise you that if he was on the sideline, he was not in New England Patriots apparel because he would have been identified.

"This whole issue is based on statements made by Matt Walsh, and I think we have to understand that."

The NFL fined Patriots coach Bill Belichick $500,000 and the New England organization $250,000 for the illegal taping of the Jets in the 2007 season opener.

The Patriots also lost a first-round pick as a result of the incident.

Prior to Goodell's news conference Tuesday afternoon, the NFL showed clips of the eight tapes given to the league by Walsh.

Those tapes show the Patriots recording coaches' signals in four regular-season games, as well as the 2002 AFC championship game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Walsh, who worked for the Patriots from 1996-2003, will appear on "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" on HBO on Friday night.

In transcripts released by the network, Walsh charges that knowledge of and participation in the videotaping and stealing of signals began at the top levels of the coaching staff.

Now an assistant golf pro in Hawaii, Walsh said that prior to the regular-season opener in 2000, one of the team's four quarterbacks told him of a meeting where the quarterback was handed a tape of the Buccaneers' defensive coaching signals and told to learn them.

According to Walsh, the quarterback was told to stand next to then-offensive coordinator Charlie Weis and relay the defensive signals being called by Tampa Bay's staff. Weis then sent in a play call to quarterback Drew Bledsoe.

Walsh told HBO the system had a spectacular success rate, claiming he was told by one of the quarterbacks that "seventy-five percent of the time Tampa Bay ran the defense that we thought they were going to run."

While Belichick has said he could not pick Walsh "out of a lineup," Walsh told HBO that the coach was just trying to distance himself from the incident.

"I think Bill's got a pretty good memory," he said.

[Kentucky Jet]

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Damien Woody's a Fine Fit on the Rebuilt OL

Published: 05-16-08

By Randy Lange

Editor-in-Chief

Damien Woody and the New York Jets are a marriage made in green heaven.

Woody knows why he wanted the Jets. It had to do with Eric Mangini.

"Yeah, that definitely was part of it," he said of the Jets head coach, with whom he worked on the New England Patriots from 2000-03. "Just my familiarity with Eric and the philosophy he has, the core values he has, those are things I was definitely looking for. I really admire him as a coach. The preparation, the structure of the things he does are for the team."

And Woody acquired that respect even though he has always been an offensive lineman and Mangini coached defense in Foxboro.

"He was really familiar with all the guys on the roster," he recalled. "Eric was a great guy, a funny guy to work with, a relatively young guy. He had a lot of energy. So when it came time for free agency and this situation popped up, it was a pretty easy decision."

As for why the Jets would want Woody, well, they had some openings for offensive linemen, experience required. Thus in March, Mangini and general manager Mike Tannenbaum brought in left guard Alan Faneca, entering his 11th pro season, and Woody, entering his 10th.

"Me and Alan, what we bring is just a veteran experience, playing a lot of plays, playing in multiple systems," he said. "We're just bringing a wealth of knowledge to the young guys who really haven't had a lot of experience in this league so far."

Woody, in his first extensive interview since arriving on the Jets after four seasons with the Lions, told newyorkjets.com after Thursday's OTA practice that everything we've always heard about an O-line needing cohesion, chemistry and camaraderie is still true.

That belief led to a recent night out at a Brazilian steakhouse, Churrascaria Riodizio in Roslyn Heights, N.Y., not far from the Jets' Hofstra University training complex. Woody's not sure, since with everything going on in his and his family's move from Detroit "I don't know my right from my left now," but even with the presence of the Jets' linemen and the quarterbacks in the restaurant, he may have picked up the hefty tab.

It was a price the 6'3", 320-pounder was glad to pay to start a tradition among him and his new linemates.

"It goes for any offensive line at any level," he said. "The offensive line really has to be that unit that jells, and it's the hardest unit to jell. So we just wanted to get on top of it as quickly as possible. Me and Alan in particular, we wanted to get to know the guys and just go from there."

The jelling part is much appreciated by the Jets' quarterbacks. On Thursday, Chad Pennington was asked about his new line and said of Woody and Faneca:

"They've seen a lot of football and have been very successful in their careers. We have a really good mix of veterans and young players where our young players can really learn from these veterans coming in that we brought in. They