Just two years ago, Aaron Rodgers spoke in front of the New York media for the first time about why he wanted to come to the New York Jets, and his first reason was Robert Saleh. All it took was five games and four plays for everything to change.
The New York Jets fired head coach Robert Saleh today after the team fell to 2-3 with their overseas loss to the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday. Saleh only had one year left on his contract but would likely have been looking at a contract extension this offseason to prevent him being a lame duck head coach. As it turns out, he won’t even get that far.
Saleh came to the Jets with all the promise after the Jets fired Adam Gase and was going to bring a new energy to the team. He wound up being another chapter in a long book of flawed hirings by the New York Jets. In his three years and five games as the head coach of the New York Jets, Saleh went 20-36 and never sniffed the playoffs.
His tenure was marked by a lot of promises to do better and a lot of the same issues repeating themselves over and over. Saleh was able to use his defensive background to put a top-level defense on the field, but couldn’t find any way to improve the offense. His first offseason with the team, he was part of the regime to send Sam Darnold packing and bring in Zach Wilson. When that failed, the team brought in Aaron Rodgers and he got stuck with Zach Wilson again after Rodgers’ Achilles injury. Now, with a healthy Rodgers, the team looks no different than it did the previous three seasons.
Saleh has one less loss by double digits (19) in his head coaching career as he does total wins (20). He has inexcusable losses like the Week 4 loss to the Denver Broncos, where his team was able to score nine points.
The Jets are an undisciplined group who ranked first in penalties last season and are seventh this year through five games. When asked about the penalties, Saleh tried to shift the blame to Aaron Rodgers’ cadence, a weapon that has served Rodgers led offenses well for his career, instead of the lack of accountability he holds the team to.
Rodgers, rightfully, defended himself and more and more cracks in the Jets locker room began to show. Rumors have been swirling since this offseason when Rodgers missed mini camp because of a growing rift between the Hall of Fame quarterback and the head coach.
After the team’s poor showing in London this week, linebacker Quincy Williams had some cryptic things to say saying they are “tired of hearing the same thing” and he wanted people to start taking accountability.
It's obvious Williams was talking about Saleh and his “we will fix it” attitude without doing anything about it.
Saleh is not a bad coach. He is a bad head coach. He obviously has a defensive mindset and an ability to coach up players on the defensive side of the ball. But he has no grasp of improving an offense, in-game decision making, often leaning towards the most conservative of approaches, and he has no ability to hold a team accountable.
He is simply too nice of a man to be a head coach. He is very well liked as a man, but he is not a great leader. Players do not fear him and they are not held accountable for their mistakes. Saleh will be a coach in this league again, but I imagine it will be as a defensive coordinator and not as a head coach.
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