Donnie Henderson called it a “pow-wow.”
His players embraced the idea. Now we’ll see if it works.
Instead of the usual Monday rehashing of game film following Sunday’s 31-26 loss to the Chargers in which the Jets yielded 395 yards in total offense, Henderson, the fiery defensive coordinator, pushed the projector aside and gathered his players in a circle for an “air-it-out” chat session.
“I was pretty surprised,” CB David Barrett said yesterday of the unusual maneuver. “A lot of guys got out a lot of stuff they wanted to say.”
The theme was two-fold:
* The players conveyed to Henderson that they’d like him to return to his aggressive play calling, thus making way for more big plays on defense.
* The players agreed that they wanted to be held more accountable by their teammates.
The end results would appear to be Henderson trusting his players to be in the right places and thus making the aggressive calls, whether they’re pass or run blitzes or whatever.
“Defensively, we’ve strayed away from our game plans,” Barrett said. “We want to get back to what we used to be, how we used to play defense last year. Let’s get after them and get things going.”
Henderson conceded that, because the players have given up some big plays with missed assignments or poor tackling, he’s found himself “tweaking” the calls to the more conservative side for fear of being burned again.
For example, Henderson called for a “cover zero” on a play in the Atlanta game, which is essentially an all-out blitz, and Falcon RB Warrick Dunn broke off a run for 65 yards.
“Well,” Henderson said, “I wasn’t going to go back to that call again.”
The players’ message to Henderson was this: Dial it up again; we won’t let you down.
“We want to get after it,” LB Jonathan Vilma said. “Donnie wants us to get after it. So let it eat. Let it go. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, but most of the time it’s going to work.”
Fellow LB Victor Hobson said, “We want to get after people. We want (Henderson) to be comfortable enough for us to call it and put us in position to make those plays.”
Henderson sounded open to his players’ wishes – as long as they do a better job of staying in position.
“They want me to be the same aggressive guy I was when I came here,” Henderson said. “We haven’t played great defense to this point. I’ve found myself tweaking our base packages because I’m uncomfortable sometimes with how we get things done. The trust factor you must have with your defense and each guy being where they’re supposed to be is not there.
“When things break down I don’t come back to that call. I also believe, though, how are you going to find out if that call is good if you don’t call it twice?”
Said LB Mark Brown: “Just because we give up a big play doesn’t mean we should get away from calling it again. We just have to do a better job of carrying out the scheme the way it’s supposed to be carried out.”
mark.cannizzaro@nypost.com