God I remember being furious about that at the time. Things like that get lost in history. You can be a game historian all you want, but if you didn't see the game you don't really know about that and how crushing that was. That's why I enjoy hearing first hand takes from those of you around for the Namath era because I wasn't there and theres only so much you can read about and the perspective from people who didn't watch him play can be flawed or lost in translation.
Stats can lie, Joe was a pleasure to watch especially in person, the way his bullets cut thru the Shea wind was a thing of beauty
not winds like that, I had never seen a game affected by wind like that. I went to every game at the old meadowlands from 1990-closing and I always thought the winds were very overrated.
Worst wind I ever saw was Bills-Jets in Buffalo, Joe Namath 2 completions in like 20 passes, the passes were blowing sideways and backwards
I was at the 1993 Buffalo game in Buff, the day after x-mas, more known as the Cary Blanchard debacle. That was the worst wind I've seen live at a football game in my life. It was brutally cold that day... I was pretty pissed that I sat through it to watch our playoff dreams dashed
that was awful too but again it seemed to affect us more than the opponent. That game was much worse than the week 18 debacle at Houston.
Again my (Leon Bright?) had a question mark, so that really wasn't the issue. It was on Parcells because the circumstances that day were beyond strickly a north-to-south, east-to-west prevailing wind. The wind was gusting all over the place and fielding punts that day was going to be more than tricky. Meggett not catching the ball aisde, it wasn't simply a case of the ball coming up short or going over his head--it was about being able to handle covering a punt from sideline-to-sideline. There should've been two men deep.
Meggett misplayed it, the ball took a crazy bounce. having a 2nd guy back there wouldn't have prevented that from happening.
Parcells by the time he arrived with the Jets had a better handle on special teams. He gained a greater appreciation of the punting game in particular during his tenure with the Giants. As for the Jets special teams under him, of course they were going to improve under him--they were the worst in the league in special teams. Once Larry Pasquale left after Coslet came in, the Jets special teams coordinator position was a revolving door mess (Fazio, Roberts, Rose, Seely) that wasn't stabilized until Parcells brought Mike Sweatman with him from NE with him. The year before Parcells came in, under Kotite the Jets had Wayne "5.0 average" returning punts and Henry Bailey taking over from Alex van Dyke as well as Reggie Cobb who was playing out the string. Kicker was once great but over-the-hill Nick Lowrey. They were replaced by Leon Johnson and Dedric Ward as well as John Hall. As for Meggett, he had a brutal start as a Giant butchering a couple of punts in a pre-season game vs. NE, but also showed enough promise for them to keep him. In those conditions, I still put two men back.
Sweatman got run out of town following the 2 PR TD game against Baltimore to end the 2000 season, I think he got fired before Groh quit on us which obviously worked out when Westhoff came aboard soon after. Obviously it wasn't too difficult to improve from the '96 Unit but we got drastically better. leon was a great return man and Hall did a very good job as our K. Unfortunately Leon got hurt in 1998 which brought in Meggett.
Most of the games that really matter - the Broncos loss in '98, Pittsburgh in '05, Giants in '11 have been thrown out there already. So I'll toss a couple out of anger inducing ones out there that haven't been mentioned. - Bills & Ravens in 2000, to close out the season. We needed a win to make the playoffs after starting 6-0. I felt like Vinny threw those games. Man, I was pissed. I'm getting mad just thinking about the ineptitude in the Bills game. Or the Chris McAllister INT return in the Ravens game. Excuse me while I puke now. - The last game of the horrid '96 season. We were 1-14, going to Philadelphia for a meaningless game, and their QB - Ty Detmer? - made some comment about how the Jets game should be an easy win. Hugh Douglas was monster pissed - the News back page was all like "I'M GONNA HURT HIM!" We went up 21-0, and I was stoked to actually see another win. But it was not to be, Kotite shat the bed again, we lost and Hugh was traded for peanuts a couple of years later by Parcells. Hope these induced some rage for you too! Also, Hai Big Blocker.
How about if the 2nd guy is up short 10 yards in front of the normal returner to receive a short punt before it hits the ground...why the hell on Cunnigham's punt was the guy so deep, you had a QB punting the ball out of the back of the endzone the ball should never hit the ground
That point you just brought up reminded me of the playoff game vs. KC (Pat Ryan, QB) at the Meadowlands when Jennings--playing out the string--was punting for the Jets. In the warmups (fairly cold day) I noticed that Jennings obviously didn't have the 'leg' he use to have and was kicking the ball in the 45 yards in the air range. KC's special teams didn't really seem to pick up on it and if I remember correctly, their return guy was giving Jennings' "rep" too much respect by playing too deep resulting in Jenning's getting some favorable bounces (padding his average). that day.
