The Jets, who have reportedly settled on Mr. Rex Ryan as the leading candidate for the coaching position once held by Eric Mangini, are in a holding pattern. I find it interesting that Woody Johnson has not yet met with Giants defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo yet, but if the team was ready to hire him there isn’t much to hold them back now.

So in the meantime, how’s this for a game—which assistant coaches should be kept? I imagine any new coach will have to consider Mike Westhoff on special teams and Jimmy Raye (left) for running backs. All the players I’ve spoken to have only excellent things to say about those two. But there are others, DC Bob Sutton and OC Brian Schottenheimer.

Yes, Joe B. is right, there isn’t a lot of hard news coming out of Florham Park right now, more whispers and speculation. But here’s a little something I did on players who sit out of the game for a year in college and I talked to Mike DeVito.
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In his first year at Maine, Jets defensive end Mike DeVito had a job to do every game. With his family in the stands watching, the Suffern-born DeVito was given the difficult and important task of getting water for all the defensive players on the football team.

He was redshirted his freshman year, meaning that he wasn’t going to play a minute even though he was part of the team. It wasn’t how he envisioned things going as a college football player, but Maine had a talented cast at his position, including San Diego linebacker Stephen Cooper.

“It was hard to crack that rotation, but I think it was the best thing I could’ve done,” said DeVito, who just finished up his second year in the NFL after the Jets picked him up as an undrafted free agent. “Not only did I get used to the speed of the game, but it helped with my studies.”

There are plenty of reasons why a player might have to sit out a season. CHSAA players can’t play the year they transfer in. The NCAA has similar rules about transfers so that the best players don’t just trade up after a successful year or, like Maine did with DeVito, colleges have the option of keeping an athlete from playing his or her first year, a process known as redshirting.