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Rex Ryan indicated today his team's newest acquisition might take an unusual role.
Rex said #Jets will consider using Percy Harvin on punts -- "strongly."
— Kimberley A. Martin (@KMart_LI) October 22, 2014
Harvin has never returned a punt in the NFL. I still feel like this is worth a shot. Harvin is on this team to make big plays with the ball in his hand so the Jets might as well try to do that every chance they get. The Jets really haven't had a ton of juice in their return game this year. At points just catching the ball has been a challenge.
With an inexperienced punt returner back there, I think back to the Mike Westhoff days when he'd stick two guys deep. Jim Leonhard would play shallow to fair catch any short punts. Those type of kicks usually had a weird spin on them so having sure hands back there was a good idea. It also took decision-making out of the hands of a guy not used to fielding punts. The deep guy could focus on making the easy catches. I'm hopeful we see something like this out of the Jets should they choose to utilize Harvin in this fashion.