11/13 — It seemed like a great idea two weeks ago. It may still be a great idea next week or even this week.

Replace one Jets Pro Bowl kickoff returner with another.

But in the days before the Jets' welcome-back-from-the-bye game against the Jaguars on Sunday, both head coach Rex Ryan and special teams coordinator Mike Westhoff said they are looking at alternatives to Justin Miller, signed as a veteran free agent after Leon Washington's season ended at Oakland.

"We’re going to have to wait to see," Westhoff said on Thursday about who will be fielding Josh Scobee's kickoffs at the Meadowlands. "To be honest with you, we’re not 100 percent sure right now. We’ve got a few other guys that we think we can also do this with. We’re going to have to make a decision as to what we think is the best way to go."

Ryan concurred Friday, adding, "If we think that Lowery or Brad Smith gives us the best opportunity to be successful in our return game, then that’s what we’ll do."

The head coach said he's probably concerned about Miller's speed, which wasn't where it was in his Jets heyday, when he averaged 28.3 yards on 46 kickoff returns for the 2006 Jets and was the Green & White's lone representative in Honolulu after that season.

In his first game back with the Green & White, on Nov. 1 against Miami, Miller averaged 23.0 yards on five returns and got the ball out on average to the Jets' 28.

"This is the only time I’ve been around Justin," Ryan said. "He’s a competitive guy and I think he’s a hard-nosed guy. I know he was a Pro Bowl returner. But I really can’t answer that. I wasn’t here before."

Westhoff said he examined Miller, Lowery and Smith this week in that role.

"I’m looking at three different guys to see what’s going to be the best," he said. "Who’s the healthiest? Who looks the most explosive as we finish the week? And then we’ll make a decision."

Smith, although listed as limited at practice all week with the quadriceps injury he got in Week 5 at Miami, also is listed as probable for the game. Both coaches see him as returning to his several important roles, both in the offense and on special teams.

"I was happy with Brad," Westhoff said of this week's work. "We were a little disappointed last week, but now since extra time has gone on, he really appears to be getting back in. He ran all my stuff during the week. Everything that I have, Brad ran. I thought he did well. I was happy to have him back because he gives us an extra weapon on our punt team because of all the fake threats that we have."

As for kickoffs, Smith's regular-season average of 16.1 yards on 14 returns is not impressive but it includes returns of several squib kicks. Perhaps more telling is the 2007 preseason, when he took five returns an average of 25.8 yards with a long of 46, which came on the second-half kickoff of the first preseason game against the Falcons at the Meadowlands.

Lowery's first pro kickoff return, meanwhile, was a 17-yarder in place of Washington at Oakland. But while the skills aren't quite the same, he did have a 62-yard punt-return TD in the 2008 preseason opener at Cleveland.

So who will it be on the goal line for the Jaguars, and then for the Patriots, and on down the road? There's no telling until Sunday at 1 p.m. or so. But whoever it is, Westhoff said, the goal is the same.

"We want to get everybody back for our eight-game season. That’s how I’m treating it," he said. "It starts one at a time. One at a time and it’s Jacksonville. If we can get started in the right thing, there can be a lot of good things ahead of us. We knocked ourselves in the hole, but it’s not where you can’t get out of it. There are teams in the same spot that they might be happier than we are to be there but we’ll just see how it goes for the rest of it."

*Special Teams Saturday