The NFL is a results business. You are what your record says you are. And so forth.
But Robert Saleh was the first coach fired this season because he couldn’t catch a break.
Saleh never got his quarterback and that wasn’t all his fault. Saleh ultimately didn’t get the job done, as his 20-36 record will tell you. But Zach Wilson, Aaron Rodgers and others didn’t exactly help.
The Jets shocked the NFL world by firing Saleh on Tuesday after a 2-3 start. It wasn’t totally out of the blue, because the Jets came into this season with an enormous amount of pressure to win and haven’t looked good most of the season. The timing seems odd, but Saleh losing his job was possible at any time the Jets were under .500. Everyone knew that coming into the season.
But Saleh being ousted shows that you can find your dream job and then lose it because of circumstances completely out of your control.
Before he was fired, Saleh had to wonder how everything would be different if Rodgers hadn’t blown his Achilles last season. Or if Rodgers hadn’t come at all.
The one thing that Saleh got right in his three-plus seasons as Jets coach was defensive brilliance. They were bad in his first season but the roster was a total mess. In the three seasons that followed New York was fourth, third and second in yards allowed. Saleh was hired because he was a great defensive coordinator with the San Francisco 49ers, and he delivered on that part of the job.
The offense didn’t cooperate. The first misstep was Zach Wilson. If the 2020 Jets didn’t get two meaningless wins in December under Adam Gase, they would have drafted Trevor Lawrence first overall and not Wilson second. Lawrence has his own issues but he’s light years better than Wilson, one of the biggest draft busts in many years. Perhaps Saleh can be blamed for not developing Wilson, but let’s see if Wilson emerges as a viable quarterback with any other coaching staff in his career. Most likely, it just seemed that the Jets made a bad draft pick. That’s not all on Saleh.
Rodgers was going to fix it all after the Jets made a big trade for him. Then, four plays into last season, he tore his Achilles. Saleh can’t control that. If anything, going 7-10 last season with the worst quarterback play in the NFL showed that Saleh can coach. He had to feel like with just average quarterback play the Jets would have made the playoffs.
And it’s hard to put the blame on Saleh for the offensive issues.
Rodgers is, as the Green Bay Packers’ CEO once said, a “complicated fella.” To get Rodgers, Saleh had to give up a lot of control. Nathaniel Hackett was a Rodgers favorite, and even though he had a horrible season as the Denver Broncos head coach, he was hired to be the Jets offensive coordinator. That was a transparent move to land Rodgers, not because Hackett is a brilliant offensive mind. Hackett was kept on for a second season and it’s hard to imagine that was solely due to his offensive acumen. The Jets, and Saleh, bent over backwards to make Rodgers happy. When the offense struggled with Rodgers this season, who was a year older and coming off a major injury, it’s hard to pin that (or things like Breece Hall’s sudden struggles) on Saleh. It also didn’t help Saleh that his complicated QB publicly gave him a subtle rip for not holding players accountable, or had an awkward moment on the sideline with him when Saleh apparently wanted to give his quarterback a celebratory hug.
And some other things were completely out of Saleh’s control. Imagine if kicker Greg Zuerlein made a field goal in the final minute of a Week 4 game against the Denver Broncos. Would a 3-2 Jets team, tied for first place in the AFC East, be firing its coach? Probably not.
If the Jets had Lawrence and not Wilson, if Rodgers had gone to the Denver Broncos or somewhere else when the Packers were shopping him and the Jets had figured out a different solution at quarterback, if Rodgers had stayed healthy when he might have still had a good season left before age 40 or even if New York’s kicker hadn’t missed a field goal to beat Denver, Saleh’s story might be much different. At very least he probably still has a job.
Saleh’s final record with the Jets will say 20-36. He isn’t totally off the hook for that, or the Jets’ poor start to this season. But he also couldn’t catch a break. Saleh ultimately took the fall as others around him failed. Life in the NFL isn’t always fair.
