Adam Gase on Friday announced the completion of his Jets assistant coaching staff and it included a couple of interesting twists.
One was Joe Vitt, a 41-year NFL coaching veteran who also happens to be Gase’s father-in-law. Vitt will serve as a senior defensive assistant working with outside linebackers. The other was former Lions offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter, who only a year ago was considered a head-coaching candidate. Cooter will coach running backs.
Vitt spent more than a decade in New Orleans as assistant head coach and linebackers coach. In 2012, he served as interim head coach of the Saints when Sean Payton was forced to sit out the season as punishment for his role in the Bountygate scandal.
But the drama didn’t end there. Vitt, who also served a six-game suspension at the start of that season for his alleged role in Bountygate, worked with then-Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, who is now the Jets’ defensive coordinator. During hearings into Bountygate, conducted by former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, Vitt accused Williams of lying in his testimony.
Williams was suspended indefinitely in March 2012, but was reinstated in August 2013.
Vitt was on Gase’s Dolphins staff last year as senior director of football and player development. Before that, he spent 38 seasons as an NFL assistant coach with eight different teams, predominantly working with linebackers. From 2006-16 he was assistant head coach/linebackers for the Saints and helped them win Super Bowl XLIV.
Vitt’s daughter, Jennifer, met Gase in at a charity golf tournament. They married a year later and now have three children together.
Vitt also coached with the St. Louis Rams (2004-05), Chiefs (2000-03), Packers (1999), Eagles (1995-98), Los Angeles Rams (1992-94), Seahawks (1982-91) and Baltimore Colts (1979-81). He served as an interim head coach twice, for the Saints in 2012 and for the Rams in 2005.
Cooter joins the Jets after five seasons in Detroit, where he started out as the quarterbacks coach for Matthew Stafford. He became offensive coordinator in 2015, and in 2017 the Lions had the No. 13 offense in the NFL, the sixth-ranked passing offense and the No. 7 scoring offense.
Cooter’s first NFL coaching experience was as an offensive assistant for the Colts from 2009-11. He was the Chiefs’ quality control coordinator for a season, then an offensive assistant for Denver in 2013, when he first worked with Gase.
Cooter and Vitt will join the coordinators Gase already hired — Williams on defense, Dowel Loggains on offense and Brant Boyer, a holdover from Todd Bowles’ staff, on special teams. Gase also hired Williams’ son, Blake Williams, as a defensive assistant.
In all, 13 of the 21 coaches on Gase’s staff are new to the Jets, but only one position coach, Dennard Wilson with the defensive backs, is a holdover. Under Wilson, 2017 first-round pick Jamal Adams has developed into one of the best safeties in the NFL. Wilson will also serve as the defensive passing game coordinator this season, a new responsibility.
Among the hires, not including Loggains, Gase brought in five members of his former staff from the Dolphins to be assistants — assistant head coach offense/wide receivers coach Shawn Jefferson (wide receivers coach in Miami from 2016-18), assistant head coach defense/inside linebackers coach Frank Bush (same role in Miami from 2017-18), offensive assistant Bo Hardegree (quarterbacks coach in Miami from 2016-18), defensive line coach Andre Carter (same role in Miami from 2017-18) and Vitt.
Aside from Wilson, the returning assistants include Steve Jackson as assistant defensive backs coach, Jeff Hammerschmidt as an assistant to Boyer on special teams coach and Robby Brown as a defensive assistant. Strength and conditioning coach Justus Galac stays along with his assistants Aaron McLaurin and Joseph Giacobbe.
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