For a while there, the New York Jets were convinced that they were just one piece away from realizing their vision of divisional dominance. That'll have to happen under a new head coach: On Tuesday, the team fired Robert Saleh after a 2-3 start to the season; he was escorted out of the building by security. Defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich will serve as interim HC.
Saleh's tenure ends after three-plus seasons and a 20-36 overall record. In 2021, he had rookie quarterback Zach Wilson, who was bad; the team went 4-13. In 2022, the Jets squandered a 7-4 start to finish 7-10. Last season, they expected to finally put it all together with a trade for quarterback Aaron Rodgers, whose Achilles exploded on the first series, dooming them to another 7-10 finish. This season, the Jets had a healthy Rodgers, practically all the talent they could want (excluding Haason Reddick), and a pretty vulnerable AFC East. In Week 4, they couldn't score a touchdown in a 10-9 loss to the Denver Broncos, and this past Sunday, they clawed back from a 17-0 deficit against the Minnesota Vikings to lose in more respectable fashion, 23-17.
It's difficult to say that Saleh was the biggest problem, but also difficult to absolve him. He came to the Jets as a defensive coordinator, and the defense has been solid to formidable throughout his time there. Players like Sauce Gardner and Quinnen Williams developed into top-tier starters. Still, the offense went through so many iterations, and none of them could score points regularly. That's not Saleh's side of the ball, but he's the head coach. He's supposed to find someone who can handle it.
But who can handle that when the focal point of the offense is Rodgers? Everything has to work for and through him, and despite all the coddling, this unpleasant crank coasting off his reputation still couldn't hit 300 passing yards in a game. The Jets appeased him at every turn: bringing in his mediocre old teammates so he'd have familiar pass-catchers, hiring Nathaniel Hackett as offensive coordinator so that the quota of Family Guy references would be up to his liking, and running his preferred pre-snap cadence. After five false-start penalties in the loss to Denver, Saleh didn't rule out the cadence as a potential problem, but then when Rodgers got testy about it in his postgame presser, the coach backtracked a few days later, saying there was "no cadence issue."
That incident feels like a good window into the relationship between Saleh and Rodgers. The head coach was losing favor, and the QB is harder to fire. Perhaps, as former Jets head coach Eric Mangini suggested on Fox Sports 1 a week ago, team owner and former U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom Woody Johnson felt embarrassed in front of his London mates this past Sunday, and took it out on the guy with the least job security. Personally, I think selling out this hard for Rodgers will doom this team to an outcome they could have accomplished with Mike White. There are 12 games left to prove otherwise.
