07/09 — We're halfway through the AFC East Trends blog series, and rather than recycling through the division foes immediately, I thought I'd fire the gun to end the first half and bring you a "halftime show" featuring the Jets and Justin Miller. It's a wacky little "trend" that I uncovered while doing research for ths year's Jets media guide.

Miller, as we know, led the NFL in kickoff return average among qualifying returners last year. But as it turns out, in so doing he continued an odd Green & White tradition. Every 11 seasons, a different Jet leads the NFL in this department.

Rookie Bobby Humphery was the first Jet to top the league's charts in 1984, with a 30.7-yard average that remains the franchise record, leaving all competitors eating his dust. (The Raiders' Dokie Williams was second at 25.9.)

Then Ron Carpenter established the lucky 11-year interval in 1995, thanks to a bare-minimum 20 returns and a late scoring change that turned a zero-yard return on a muff into no return. That lifted Carpenter's average from 26.3 to 27.7 — and past the 27.0 of Denver's Glyn Milburn.

Then last season Miller repeated the interval (does it have something to do with the 11-year cycle for sunspot activity?) by turning in a 28.3 average that beat back the challenge of Patriots rookie Laurence Maroney (28.0).

Here are the Jets' three NFL leaders in this category:

Like I said, neat factoid, probably significant of nothing. But hopefully the Jets won't have to wait till 2017 for the sun to shine on their next KOR leader.

I'll begin the second half of the AFC East opponent trends Friday with the Bills, who will want to improve on certain offensive tendencies from '06.