Special Teams Review: Jets-Miami

We've been breaking down this week's game. We conclude today's postgame analysis with a look at the special teams.

Let's review the key contributions...

Kicking game - Moore power to you

The Jets' second best offensive play of the entire game actually came as they were lined up in punt formation, on 4th-and-8 deep in their own territory. The snap went to the upback, Malachi Moore, who initially ran for it and didn't look like he would make it but then he pitched it back to Isaiah Davis who ran for 19 yards. Interestingly, the pitch was low and Davis actually picked it up on the hop, which means Moore is treated as having fumbled and Davis gets credit for a recovery. It still counted as rushing yardage rather than advancing a fumble, though. Also, give Qwan'tez Stiggers credit for a good block.

In more conventional kicking action, Austin McNamara was a busy man. He punted six times and kicked off three times. None of his kickoffs were fielded inside the five, but the Dolphins didn't return one past the 33. As for his punts, he had a gross average of 54.3 yards and almost had five of six inside the 20, but the Jets failed to down two that ended up as touchbacks. The only one that was outside the 20 was a 55-yarder but McNamara did give up a higher-than-usual 32 return yards.

Nick Folk never seems to kick off these days, so his only action was to nail an extra point and a field goal.

Return game - Will I never

Isaiah Williams has continued his redemption story and now looks like a key piece for next season, for which he is under contact. Williams scored again, on a 78-yard punt return with debutant Jordan Clark making a good downfield block.

Aside from that, on punts, Williams had two fair catches, a 13-yard return and a 14-yard return that was negated by an illegal block in the back by Jeremy Ruckert. On the one that counted, Stone Smart made a good block, but Ruckert's penalty wasted good blocks by Stiggers, Andrew Beck and Dean Clark.

Two more debutants, Tre Brown and Nik Needham each got beaten by the gunner to force a fair catch.

Williams also returned two kickoffs, including one out to the 40. Nwangwu, Mykal Walker and Beck all blocked well on both of these.

Miami clearly didn't want the Jets returning anything after the touchdown as they had three touchbacks, a kickoff that went out of bounds for a penalty and a punt that also went out of bounds. One of the touchbacks pinned the Jets at their 20-yard line as Nwangwu must have been deemed to have fielded it while in the landing zone, although it didn't look like this was the case.

Nwangwu did eventually get to return one kickoff, late in the game, and he took it from the 3-yard line to the 36 behind a Ruckert block.

Kick coverage - Herb your enthusiasm

On kickoffs, the Jets stopped the Dolphins before the 35 on all three returns, with Khalil Herbert in on two of those tackles.

The Jets also allowed punt returns of 15 and 17 yards as Stiggers overpursued on one and Arian Smith overpursued on the other. Kobe King and Smartt made the stop on these while Isaiah Oliver was blocked out of the play on one and Walker missed a tackle on the other.

Smith also failed to down two McNamara punts near the goal line. On one of these, he did the hard part, stopping the ball, but then let his momentum take him into the end zone and then panicked and grounded the ball before re-establishing himself in the field of play. He could have left someone else to down it, as it wasn't going to roll into the end zone. He's screwed this up multiple times this year.

Stiggers was able to down a McNamara punt, actually catching it cleanly at the 7-yard line. Each also forced a fair catch and Stiggers made a good tackle on the opening kickoff.

We'll be back with the 3-on-D and 3-on-O over the next few days...