When your favorite NFL team isn't offering all that much to focus on that's positive, you can always rely on a good ol' punting story.
So for Jets fans, who just watched their rookie quarterback go down to injury after a shaky start to the season, have witnessed the worst offense and fourth-worst defense in the NFL through six games and who had to experience a whopping 41-point blowout at the hands of the division-rival Patriots, it's about time for a punting story.
Fortunately, that's what we got on Friday morning, after longtime Saints punter Thomas Morstead — now in his first season in New York — dug up an old photo from his New Orleans days. In the picture was an aspiring punter in seventh grade... who, a decade later, now accompanies a spot on the Jets depth chart right next to Morstead.
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10 years ago, Morstead was in his third NFL season and had already established himself as one of the better punters in football, with a Super Bowl ring from 2009 and a Pro Bowl nod on the horizon the very next year. Mann, the Jets' sixth-round pick of the 2020 NFL Draft, was but a wee 13-year-old who likely had no idea what his future held.
Mann led the NFL in punts and punting yards in 2020 — which is less a testament to his greatness and more so a brutal reminder of just how poor the Jets were in Adam Gase and Sam Darnold's final season at the helm — but suffered a knee sprain and went to IR to start off his second campaign, leading to the signing of Morstead. On Wednesday, Mann was designated to return to practice.
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