Former Hawaii head coach June Jones knows how stealthy a good QB can be and he loves the New York Jets’ pick of Zach Wilson No. 2 overall. But Jones also likes how some of the Jets’ infrastructure will help Wilson succeed in New York.
What infrastructure?
Well, the Jets did have a great draft for putting talent around Wilson. But there’s something else.
Defense.
At least the knowledge and love of it by the new Jets head coach, Robert Saleh.
“I think they got a really good player … he will play (as) good as the players around him,” Jones told SI’s “NFL Draft Bible.”
Jones, most recently working as the head coach and general manager of the Houston Roughnecks of the XFL, further explained his theory about how Wilson will gain help.
“The new head coach being a defensive guy will allow him not to have to carry the team passing, which he eventually has to do for them. … but I know how defensive guys think. …run the ball and play defense.”
New York hired Saleh in the offseason to replace Adam Gase as the head coach. Saleh, like Utah’s Kyle Whittingham, believes in defense — and both are very good at it.
Putting Wilson in a conservative, less risky offense, will allow the rookie to develop while diffusing a possible a big-time pressure situation in replacing Sam Darnold for a two-win franchise in 2020.
Scattershooting spring news …
UVU women’s golf coach Sue Nyhus is retiring after a decade at that school and another decade coaching at her alma mater BYU. I first met Nyhus 37 years ago when she came out of Florida as a smiling, bubbly, optimistic freshman golfer. She was all class then and nothing has changed. UVU’s most successful women’s golf coach ever, she will be replaced by assistant Julie Erekson.
Fairways Magazine, the official publication of the Utah Golf Association, strikes its 30th year anniversary. Publisher Randy Dodson has given voice to the state’s golfers, from juniors, prepsters, collegians, top amateurs and PGA professionals. He’s the Pied Piper of Utah’s fairways, a remarkable, hardworking, well-connected advocate for the game and its players on every stage imaginable. Kudos and congrats.
Eagle Lake’s 49-year-old teaching pro Joe Summerhays will join Tony Finau in the 103rd PGA Championship May 20-23 at the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island Golf Resort in South Carolina. Summerhays is a former BYU golfer and son of three-time Champions Tour and Stanford coach Bruce Summerhays. His sister, Carrie Summerhays Roberts, is BYU’s women’s golf coach. Joe Summerhays qualified with a top-20 finish in the PGA professionals championship.
NBA television ratings are down, just like ratings for the Masters fell significantly. Is it politics? Could it be too many NBA blowout games, injuries to stars, the absence of injured Tiger Woods? COVID-19 fatigue?
The Athletic’s Ethan Strauss put it this way:
“So what’s the lesson? We’re still learning and it’s likely a product of many factors. Perhaps, in broad strokes, what’s happening is an addendum to MLB reliever Sean Doolittle’s quote, ‘Sports are like the reward for a functioning society.’
“Not only are sports a reward in a functioning society, but also they get rewarded. The more happy and carefree people are, the more they can enjoy sports. Seems we’re a ways away from ‘happy’ and ‘carefree,’ but hopefully some better days are ahead.”