Thomas Morstead shouts out his protégé Blake Gillikin after huge game

It didn’t take Thomas Morstead long to win over his New York Jets teammates, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to the many New Orleans Saints fans who cheered for him the last decade. But he found time to catch his old teammates’ game with the Washington Football Team on Sunday after his Jets squad lost a frustrating game in London to the Atlanta Falcons.

And Morstead had to be impressed by what he saw from Blake Gillikin, who he spent the last year of his Saints career tutoring. Gillikin punted five times for 268 yards (53.6 yards per try) and dropped three of them inside Washington’s 3-yard line. It was enough to earn some praise from his mentor on social media afterwards.

But Gillikin didn’t have time to check his phone between celebrating the win and rushing to a postgame press conference, where he said his time at Penn State prepared him for this moment.

“You know, (the Big Ten is) a punting conference, which is great,” Gillikin joked after the game. Between that experience and Morstead’s tutelage, it’s clear he’s the man for this job. We’ll just have to wait and see if he can hold it down for a decade like Morstead did. But there’s no doubting he’s off to a hot start.

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