The Jets broke 25 years of precedent by firing head coach Robert Saleh midseason. Could the Saints make a similar bold move?
The New York Jets broke 25 years of precedent by firing head coach Robert Saleh midseason. Unsatisfied with his team’s 2-3 start and Saleh’s 20-36 record, team owner Woody Johnson chose to act boldly and go in a new direction just five games into the 2024 season. It remains to be seen how much input Aaron Rodgers had on the move given all of the Jets’ kowtowing to his demands over the last year, but this was big news in the NFL either way.
Could the New Orleans Saints make a similar bold move? Gayle Benson has only hired one coach after inheriting the team from her late husband Tom Benson, who never fired a coach during the season since buying the team in 1985. But Dennis Allen’s position isn’t much different than Saleh’s was before the Jets took action.
Just like the Jets, the Saints are 2-3 right now. Allen has gone 18-21 through three seasons as head coach, which admittedly isn’t as low a winning percentage (.462) as Saleh (.357), even if it is on the wrong side of .500. But how much more losing can the Saints take? They’re coming off their third straight loss.
Every week Allen is slumping at the podium talking about how his team has gotten outplayed and outcoached, and how they’ve made too many mistakes that cost them big opportunities. There’s nothing insightful about that and it raises the question of whether Allen knows how to fix these problems. Allen is supposed to be known for the strength of his defense but they’re getting carved up by has-beens like Kareem Hunt (102 rushing yards, his most since 2020) and JuJu Smith-Schuster (130 receiving yards, his most since the 2020 Wild Card Round). Every week there’s a new tight end streaking through the secondary with a neon sign around his neck showing that he’s open.
He still hasn’t figured out how to compete with good teams. The Saints have lost so many games in the same ways these last three years that they’ve started to run together. Something needs to change, and fast. And it might need to start at the top of the organization.
Statement from Jets owner Woody Johnson on Robert Saleh’s firing
New York Jets owner Woody Johnson has broken his silence.
The Jets fired head coach Robert Saleh following a 2-3 start to the 2024 NFL season. In his tenure, Saleh notched a 20-36 overall record as the team’s bench boss.
Saleh’s firing came as a shock considering the team’s record, it only being five games into the season and losing by close calls in each of their past two outings.
Most recently, New York lost to the Minnesota Vikings, 23-17, out in London in Week 5.
Following the team’s decision, Johnson released this statement:
Per FOX Sports’ Jay Glazer, Saleh was “blindsided” by the decision by owner Woody Johnson to fire him. The report adds that Saleh was “disappointed” he did not get a chance to turn things around.
Glazer indicated he personally spoke to Saleh:
Just talked to Robert Saleh who said was blindsided by Woody Johnson walking to his office and letting him go. Certainly disappointed he wasn’t going to be given the opportunity to get things going with what he said is a very good roster
Saleh was hired in 2021. He had a 20-36 overall record. The decision from the front office comes amid apparent disagreements between the coach and quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
In a separate report, NFL Network’s Peter Schrager has updated that the conversation was not just between Woody Johnson and Saleh, as it was noted that Christopher Johnson was in attendance as well. Reportedly, general manager Joe Douglas was not in the meeting.
Schrager also stated: “Robert Saleh came to work today thinking he was preparing for the Buffalo Bills. He was given no indication he would be losing his job.”
In Week 6, the Jets will host the Bills (3-2) in their next contest on “Monday Night Football.”
Jets Wire will provide updates when information is made available.
Surprisingly, the Jets are not firing offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett despite their offense ranking sixth-worst in yards per game (286.6) and eighth-worst in points per game (18.6) this season.
Hackett served as the Denver Broncos head coach in 2022 before being fired with two games remaining that season. He went 4-11 with the Broncos.
Fans and pundits in Denver were surprised by New York’s decision to give Saleh the boot and stick with Hackett. Here’s a sampling of how Broncos Country reacted to the news on Twitter/X on Tuesday.
New Jets coaching staff Head coach: RFK OC: Aaron Rodgers DC: Alex Jones Strength+Conditioning: Joe Rogan O Line Coach: Kyle Rittenhouse Director of Comm: Elon Musk Head of PR: Tucker Carlson Scouts: Ben Shapiro, Tomi Lahren, Candace Owens
Very Jets to fire their defensive minded head coach that had their defense playing well but keeping their OC who has not been good the past year and a half he has been there. pic.twitter.com/kDLFr4h1p0
Saleh, 45, will likely become a top defensive coordinator candidate. That could become notable in Denver if Vance Joseph leaves for a head coach job in 2025, but the Broncos do have a strong in-house candidate in Jim Leonhard. For now, Joseph remains the DC in Denver and Saleh is a coaching free agent. And Hackett, somehow, remains the Jets’ OC.
Jets fire head coach and one-time Lions front-running candidate Robert Saleh, reinforcing how Dan Campbell was the correct hire in Detroit
Dan Campbell is one of the most popular NFL coaches around the league. He’s certainly got a tremendously high approval rating in Detroit and amongst the Lions fan base. Leading a franchise to the first NFC North division title and breaking a playoff drought of over 30 years will do that for a coach.
But when the Lions hired Campbell back in 2021, he was not a universally popular choice. In fact, Campbell wasn’t the desired coach of a significant portion fo the fan base. Or the local government, either.
Many wanted Robert Saleh, a Detroit-area (Dearborn) native who had been the very successful defensive coordinator for the San Francisco 49ers at that time. Saleh was a very popular and accomplished candidate, one supported by the Michigan legislature at the time. He was a primary choice for the gig.
The Lions ultimately chose Dan Campbell, and we are grateful for that decision. Saleh wound up landing the New York Jets head coaching position. It did not go particularly well in New York for Saleh, for a barrage of reasons. Now he’s back looking for his next job after the Jets fired Saleh on Tuesday after the team lost in London to the unbeaten Minnesota Vikings.
Saleh finished his Jets coaching career with a 20-36 record and failed to record a winning season. Campbell, meanwhile, is 27-27-1 but has gone 24-14 since his first season.
Jets fire head coach Robert Saleh ahead of prime-time clash with Bills
The New York Jets will not be under the watch of Robert Saleh when the Buffalo Bills face them in their upcoming Week 6 clash.
Ahead of the Bills (3-2) and Jets (2-3) doing battle on “Monday Night Football,” New York has decided to fire the head coach. It was first reported by ESPN’s Adam Schefter:
Saleh, who was hired in 2021 and had a 20-36 overall record.
It had appeared in recent weeks that Saleh and Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers were not on the same page. Most recently, New York lost to the Minnesota Vikings in a 23-17 final out in London.
Following Saleh’s dismissal defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich has been named interim head coach.
Mekhi Becton’s career with the New York Jets came to an end when the 2023 season did, but you can’t blame the veteran guard for keeping close tabs on the team that drafted him No. 11 overall out of Louisville in 2020.
So when the Jets made the stunning decision to fire head coach Robert Saleh on Tuesday morning amid a 2-3 start, it wasn’t surprising that Becton would have some very particular feelings about the situation.
Saleh, after all, had been his head coach from 2021-2023 amid injuries to the guard’s knees and position changes. It just doesn’t appear Becton has any sympathy for his former boss. In a post on X/Twitter that was very quickly deleted, Saleh posted a meme that’s become shorthand for celebrating an enemy’s downfall.
It’s the same tweet Joel Embiid posted when the Philadelphia 76ers traded Ben Simmons. Now that Becton plays for the Eagles, it’s clear something about being in Philly just brings out the best version of hating in all of us.
Robert Saleh’s run with the New York Jets has officially come to an end
The New York Jets reportedly fired Robert Saleh as head coach on Tuesday, per ESPN’s Adam Schefter.
It marks the first time Jets owner Woody Johnson has ever fired a coach during the season. Even more shocking, the decision came only five games into the 2024 regular season schedule.
Schefter also reported that defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich has been named the team’s interim head coach.
The Jets haven’t won more than seven games under Saleh. There was hope that would change with Aaron Rodgers signing with the team in 2023, but the legendary quarterback went down with a season-ending injury on the first drive of the opener.
Rodgers returned for the 2024 season, and so far, the Jets have been shockingly underwhelming as a football team.
Defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich is being named the New York Jets interim head coach, per source. pic.twitter.com/3a6SeI9G2r
They managed to knock off two struggling franchises in the New England Patriots and Tennessee Titans, but five games into the season, they are sitting at 2-3 with losses to the San Francisco 49ers, Denver Broncos and Minnesota Vikings.
The Patriots are slated to face the Jets in a rematch in Week 8. It’s unknown if the Jets will ride out the season with Ulbrich as the interim coach or if they have another pending immediate hire in mind.
Suffice to say, the 2024 NFL season has not gone as Jets owner Woody Johnson had hoped. The Buffalo Bills’ rolling rebuild, Miami Dolphins’ injuries and New England Patriots’ de-evolution into a Superfund site created a tremendous opportunity to reign above the AFC East. Instead, New York is 2-3, with those two victories coming against the aforementioned Patriots and a nearly-as-bad Tennessee Titans team.
Something had to be done. Since you can’t fire the players — especially when one of those players is a former four-time MVP for whom you sacrificed multiple high value draft picks — Saleh was the obvious choice.
This was only partially related to his work on the sideline. Saleh wasn’t quite a lame duck coach, but with his contract expiring after 2025, he was close. He hadn’t done enough to earn an expensive extension. But he wasn’t quite bad enough to be fired in October, either.
The Jets’ defense — Saleh’s purview as the former coordinator of the San Francisco 49ers — remains elite. New York gave up the most yards in the NFL in his 2021 debut. In the three years since it’s ranked fourth, third and second. His defensive expected points added (EPA) per play allowed in 2024 is sixth-best in the league despite the fact his highest profile offseason addition, Haason Reddick, refuses to practice. Since 2022, the game’s most efficient defenses have been the one Saleh left behind and the one from which he just got fired:
via rbsdm.com and the author.
Tuesday’s firing was not a treatise on the Jets’ defense. It was a scream into the void about an offense that continues to stink. This was acceptable in Weeks 1 through 3, where Aaron Rodgers was working off the rust of last season’s torn Achilles and slowly coming to life in a 2-1 start. This did not last.
Rodgers fell apart when the rain hit in Weeks 4 and 5. He threw more interceptions (three) than touchdown passes (two) in a pair of losses — one reasonable (the streaking Minnesota Vikings) and one less so (against Bo Nix and the Denver Broncos). He has yet to throw for 300 yards in a single game as a Jet and has broken the 250 yard mark once in five games he’s finished. His 6.0 percent deep ball rate ranks 28th among 32 NFL starting quarterbacks. His 6.0 yards per attempt are lower than Zach Wilson’s 6.2 in relief of the former MVP in 2023.
New York was actually pretty accommodating of all this! Rodgers got swamped and tore his Achilles in Week 1 last season, so the Jets revamped their offensive line. Rodgers’ 27.6 percent pressure rate is sixth-lowest in the league. His 2.3 seconds of pocket time per dropback is on the low side, but it’s the same it was in 2021 … when he was NFL MVP as a Green Bay Packer.
He’s been forced into a gameplan that emphasizes short throws in order to mitigate pressure and the waning arm strength of a 40-year-old. His average target distance is down from 8.0 yards in his final season as a Packer to 6.4 this fall. That’s a bitter pill to swallow for a quarterback who has been superhuman downfield in a long, celebrated career.
The fact of the matter is Rodgers, who’d played his least efficient football as a full-time starter in 2022, hasn’t gotten better as he breached 40 years old. The processing is still there. The scrambles that once kept plays alive are a step slower. The darts that once fit through tiny windows for big gains are now sailing or sagging. There are moments when classic Rodgers shines through. There are at least an equal amount in which he does not.
can't remember how many times Aaron Rodgers has walked this tightrope in the past to crush opponents (mostly the Bears). just isn't quite right yet pic.twitter.com/wexFihKiLq
The Jets understood this risk when they traded two second round selections and a first round pick swap to the Packers for a quarterback who’d burned his bridges in Wisconsin. They knew the cost was high and there’d be a chance, regardless of Rodgers’ off-field whatever, he’d no longer be the perennial MVP candidate he once was. New York took that risk anyway, because that’s what drafting quarterbacks like Zach Wilson, Sam Darnold, Christian Hackenberg and Mark Sanchez will do to you.
That bet keeps losing, and someone had to pay. It wasn’t going to be Rodgers, the player on whom the Jets staked their short term ambitions. With Saleh’s contract nearing its end, he was the sacrifice Johnson deemed necessary.
Now Jeff Ulbrich takes over as interim head coach. He’d better have some deep balls cooked into his game plan.
The Jets fired their head coach and the Steelers fans wish they would as well.
The big news in the NFL on Tuesday is the New York Jets deciding to part ways with head coach Robert Saleh five games into the season. The Jets are the first team to fire a coach this season and the first time the Jets have done something like this in the 25-year tenure of owner Woody Johnson.
New York currently sits at 2-3 and for all the money this team has spent, they have certainly underperformed. This is the exact scenario many Pittsburgh Steelers fans would love to see with head coach Mike Tomlin and the Steelers front office.
The second we heard this announcement, we thought of Pittsburgh and how no matter what happens with this team, they feel like the answer is to fire Tomlin. All you have to do is search “fire Tomlin” on social media after Sunday’s loss to the Dallas Cowboys and see how badly many Steelers fans want him gone.
