FLORHAM PARK – Jets coach Rex Ryan said Wednesday that he “absolutely” feels comfortable with the late-game procedures he has in place for calling timeouts.
In case you’ve been completely disconnected from anything involving the Jets, here’s a quick refresher:
In Sunday’s 31-24 loss at Green Bay, the Jets had the tying touchdown pass negated because defensive tackle Sheldon Richardson alerted the line judge that the team wanted a timeout, since he saw offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg calling for one.
While Ryan feels OK with his current procedures for timeouts, he said Sunday’s game served to emphasize an important point.
“It’s clear now that our players know that, on the sideline, you’re not going to call a timeout,” Ryan said. “Sheldon makes an honest mistake, but we know now.”
Technically, only the head coach can call timeout from the sideline, so Mornhinweg needed to alert Ryan that he wanted one. But Ryan’s radio headset was tuned to the defensive channel, so Mornhinweg had to physically approach Ryan and tell him he wanted timeout, rather than speaking to Ryan via the headsets. Ryan calls the Jets’ defensive plays, and since this was a fourth-down play, he was on the defensive channel so he could prepare for what the Jets would do next, if they didn’t get the first down.
In situations like this, when Ryan’s headset is tuned to the defensive channel and the offense needs a timeout, Ryan said the assistant coaches upstairs in the press box – the guys he can communicate with through his headset – alert him that a timeout is needed. This has long been Ryan’s standard procedure for these moments.
“The dynamics really never change,” Ryan said. “If I’m ever on the headset on defense, then it goes through from up top. So it’s (quarterbacks coach) David Lee and the people that I have up top tell me. That’s the way it’s always been. That’s the way it works.”
Lee is in the press box with the defensive coaches, so they can collectively alert Ryan via the headset if he is on the defensive channel.
“I never saw Marty give the timeout,” Ryan said. “I never saw it, but I heard (through the headset from upstairs) that, ‘Hey, it looks like Marty wants a timeout.’ And I looked, and he’s like, ‘No, no.’”
So, by the time Ryan looked at Mornhinweg, the coordinator had changed his mind about wanting a timeout. But Richardson was already alerting the line judge, at this point, that the Jets needed a timeout, because Richardson didn’t see Mornhinweg waving off his request. NFL rules state that the line judge should not take his eyes off the play in a situation like this, and that he should only not grant the timeout if he is certain that someone other than the head coach is requesting it.
“It just never worked out,” Ryan said. “I’m not going to complain about it. It’s not sour grapes. Obviously, I would’ve liked to have had the touchdown, but that never happened, so you move on.”
The bottom line: Ryan has no problem with the system he currently has in place for handling timeout scenarios like this one.
“It’s easy to say, ‘Well, I should always be on offense (the offensive headset channel),’” Ryan said. “But I know, just like any (head) coach that calls defense, that’s not always going to happen. That’s not always the case.”
