Robert Saleh should not be absolved for the embarrassing degree of ineptitude his New York Jets have achieved
Adam Gase. Rich Kotite.
Those are the only head coaches in New York Jets history with a worse winning percentage than Robert Saleh (among 16 head coaches with a minimum of 15 games coached).
In the midst of his sixth three-plus-game losing streak as the Jets’ head coach, Saleh now boasts a 15-30 record (.333) in New York. That hardly clears Gase’s .281 winning percentage at the helm, while Kotite sits in the basement at .125.
You can make all of the excuses in the book for Saleh – injuries, lack of quarterback talent, poor offensive coordinators – and those excuses are fair. But when it’s all said and done, the old saying rings true: you are what your record says you are.
Oftentimes, win-loss records in the NFL tell a misleading story. Context is essential, especially in smaller samples. Every coach and player deserves time to figure things out and push their record to a more accurate position.
But when you’re 45 games in, that old staying starts to solidify itself. Saleh’s had plenty of time to balance his record out. Maybe a 15-30 coach is exactly who Saleh is.
In a league where…
- The Vikings are 6-5 with Josh Dobbs and no Justin Jefferson
- The Texans are 6-4 with a rookie quarterback (6.5 pre-season over-under)
- The Browns are 7-3 with terrible quarterback play, no Nick Chubb, and neither of their starting offensive tackles
- The Colts are 5-5 with a rookie head coach after losing their starting QB in September (6.5 pre-season over-under)
… what exactly is Saleh’s excuse for the continuous losing?
Especially in such embarrassing fashion? Friday’s loss was Saleh’s eighth defeat by 20+ points, ranking as the second-most in football since 2021 behind only the Giants (10). Even fellow struggling teams like the Commanders (5), Cardinals (5), Colts (4), Raiders (4), Falcons (4), and Broncos (3) have not come close to matching the Jets’ penchant for pitiful defeats under Saleh. The Jets have four losses by 20+ points in 2023 alone, tying the Giants for the most.
The obstacles Saleh has dealt with have certainly limited him from leading the Jets to Super Bowl contention. But in the NFL, it’s really not that difficult to be a competent, competitive team. Every year, there are countless teams who place themselves in the playoff mix and enjoy a surprisingly fun season when they have no business doing so.
Because that’s the nature of football: It’s a fluky sport where a couple of 50-50 plays each game can turn the entire outcome. Couple that with the fact there are only 17 games in a season, and it’s not hard to churn out a good season in any given year. This isn’t basketball where there are over 200 possessions each game, causing luck to balance out and thus making it difficult for talent-deprived teams to steal enough games to be a surprise contender over an 82-game season.
Yet, Saleh is on his way to a third consecutive season in which the Jets finish at least three games below .500 and nowhere particularly close to the playoff conversation (despite the 2022 team technically having a shot into Week 17). Somehow, Saleh’s squads have been so dysfunctional that they cannot even flirt with competency.
Saleh deserves some slack for what he’s put up with in New York. With the rampant injuries, poor quarterback play, and overall poor offensive talent, nobody expects Saleh to have conquered the NFL world by now. Certainly, there is a firm cap on what his teams could have been capable of accomplishing.
Once again, though: The product placed on the field by Saleh has gone far beyond the slack that is permitted by the issues he has dealt with. Since Saleh took over, the Jets have the NFL’s fourth-worst record and third-worst point differential. Even this year, despite some high points, the Jets are still the third-worst team in the AFC standings and have the second-worst point differential in the conference.
Saleh should not be expected to have the Jets looking like world-beaters right now with Tim Boyle at quarterback and a collection of scrapheap pickups along the offensive line. Is it too much, though, to ask for mere respectability? That’s all fans want, and yet, the Jets are flat-out embarrassing.
They are performing historically badly on offense. They suffer too many non-competitive blowouts. They are prone to long losing streaks. They commit a ton of hilarious blunders that make them the butt of the joke around the league.
Supposedly, Saleh has changed the culture around the Jets, but when you read that previous paragraph, this sure feels like the same exact product that Jets fans have been fed since long before Saleh arrived. And at the end of the day, the product on the field falls on the head coach.
The excuses only go so far. How much more can Saleh possibly be excused for?
Yes, the blame for this situation is shared. Joe Douglas deserves blame for a brutal offseason that led directly to many of the talent deficiencies the roster is currently suffering from. The players on the field, especially the veterans, also deserve blame for underperforming. The Jets’ bad luck with injuries has gone beyond what is typical for an NFL team.
To blame Saleh, we need to focus on him as an individual and analyze the things that ultimately fall directly on his shoulders.
And when you do that, there are numerous pieces of evidence that prove he has done a poor job as a head coach within what he can control.
Here are the primary criticisms of Robert Saleh that prove why he should be on the hot seat (even though he most certainly is not and will return next season).
League-worst penchant for avoidable penalties
In 2023, the Jets are tied for the NFL lead in both roughing the passer penalties (5) and unnecessary roughness penalties (8). Their combined total of 13 penalties between those two varieties is the most in the NFL.
This is no fluke. The Jets led the league in the same category in 2022 with 14 combined roughing the passer and unnecessary roughness penalties.
Any one single penalty can be pinned on the player for having a momentary lapse of judgment. But when a team stockpiles these completely avoidable penalties all season long for two consecutive years, that falls on the coaching staff for failing to instill discipline in the team. It does not seem like Saleh and his staff are doing a good enough job of holding players accountable for these killer penalties.
In-play penalties are one thing. Holding, pass interference, and other penalties of that variety often come down to the player getting beat rather than anything discipline-related. Those penalties are a product of bad play more than anything. But roughing the passer and unnecessary roughness penalties are purely a product of discipline.
Despite a myriad of slogans and mantras, it does not seem Saleh’s messaging has translated to positive on-field results. His team lacks control in big moments. Even worse, it’s often veterans who are committing the costliest penalties.
Stubborn refusal to bench underperforming players, especially veterans
Saleh’s Jets often take too long to bench players who are clearly hurting the team and have little hope of turning things around. Whether it’s C.J. Uzomah, Dalvin Cook, or Allen Lazard, the Jets waited too long this season to bench players who were underperforming. Sure, the Jets don’t really have appealing fallback options, but when the floor can hardly go any lower than what you’re putting out there each week, you might as well shoot for a higher ceiling with your younger backups.
This is particularly the case with highly-paid veteran players whom the team has a financial attachment to. It seems like Saleh and his staff are more concerned with justifying their investments than winning.
A perfect example is Saleh’s nonsensical explanation for Israel Abanikanda receiving no offensive snaps against Miami.
Robert Saleh says the reason Israel Abanikanda isn’t playing right now is because he’s not where he needs to be in pass protection.#Jets
— Nick Faria (@Nick_Faria1720) November 25, 2023
Saleh claims Abanikanda is not playing because his pass protection needs work. That is a perfectly fair concern, but when you consider who is playing over Abanikanda, the explanation makes very little sense.
Dalvin Cook has been known as a poor blocker throughout his career and we’ve seen that show up over the past two games. Cook has given up a sack in back-to-back games.
https://t.co/Rg5GELtqhH pic.twitter.com/nwErWRtyv6
— Michael Nania (@Michael_Nania) November 25, 2023
— Michael Nania (@Michael_Nania) November 25, 2023
If pass protection is truly a concern for Saleh and the Jets, how can they justify playing Cook over Abanikanda? With Cook’s performance in pass protection, Abanikanda cannot be worse than equal to him in that department. Considering Abanikanda offers significantly more potential in every other area, why not just make the switch and get Cook out of there?
Here’s why: The Jets paid $7 million for Cook and rolled out the red carpet to recruit him in the offseason, so they’re hanging onto dear life to try and prove they didn’t make a bad decision.
News flash: It’s November 25. The Cook experiment has been over for more than two months. Admit defeat and let your rookie have his chance to shine. The longer the Jets cling to Cook, it will only make Saleh and the team look worse.
Overly safe/scared mentality
Two weeks ago in Las Vegas, Robert Saleh was quoted by Tony Dungy as saying the Jets’ game against the Raiders was “a race to 20 points.”
Was Saleh wrong when he said that? No. In fact, neither team even got to 20 points. The Raiders won 16-12.
Regardless, the fact that Saleh would even say that to a member of the media highlights one of the most significant problems with the mentality Saleh has instilled in this team. He has the Jets playing scared football.
Yeah, the Jets offense is awful. We know that. But you cannot allow that to push you into curling up into a ball. Even if you know your offense lacks talent, it’s a requirement to play like you believe it can thrive – delusional as that may be. Playing scared when the offense already lacks talent will only exacerbate the issue. You might fail if you have a bad offense that takes risks, but you will definitely fail if you have a bad offense that never takes risks.
While Saleh does not call or design the offense, his quote to Dungy summarizes the way he has always talked about this team since it became clear in 2022 that they have an elite defense and a bad offense. He wants to win a 14-10 punt-fest every week, and that mentality extends to how the offense is called.
This mentality is the wrong way to maximize the Jets’ great defense. Instead of being content with continuous punts, the Jets should be throwing caution to the wind on offense, taking aggressive risks with the comfort that they know their defense can back them up with a big stop if they make a mistake.
This is especially true when you consider the Jets’ defense is much better at holding up in the red zone than it is at preventing long drives, anyway. It’s a bend-but-don’t-break defense. The Jets’ defense plays with a willingness to allow some long drives because they are confident they can prevent big plays and hold up in the red zone.
Knowing you play this style of defense, why not raise your offensive ceiling by playing aggressively? If you mess up, you have a great red-zone defense behind you. It sure beats playing scared and punting when the opponent has a decent chance of driving into the red zone anyway, which is where they would’ve been in the worst-case scenario if an aggressive playstyle led to a costly turnover.
Because of how scared they are to mess up, it often feels like the Jets are not even trying to convert on third down, and the numbers back that up.
On third downs this season, the Jets’ average AYTS (air yards to sticks) is -1.2, meaning their average third-down pass attempt travels 1.2 yards short of the first-down marker. That ranks 30th in the NFL ahead of only the Panthers and Giants. The NFL average is +1.2.
While Nathaniel Hackett deserves a lot of blame for this, the mentality traces back to Saleh. He doesn’t want the Jets to turn the ball over. His goal each week is to win a gritty ball-control game by any means necessary because he has no faith in the offense – he’s stated it clearly to the media. While that lack of faith is justified, the Jets are taking their conservative mentality way too far.
Saleh’s philosophy is proven incorrect by the fact that the Jets still turn the ball over frequently regardless of their exceedingly safe mentality. They’re tied for the third-most turnovers in the league with 20. What’s the point of operating a checkdown machine when it’s not accomplishing the one thing it’s supposed to?
Playing give-up football on offense has done absolutely nothing for the Jets. They are punting like crazy and still turning the ball over at a high rate. Why not let the offense open it up and take some chances to see what happens?
In a league where third-and-long is a coin flip for most NFL offenses nowadays, the Jets act like the offensive series is already over. That all goes back to a head coach who has repeatedly insisted upon a safe style of football despite consistently futile results. Saleh is stuck in the past and has not caught up to the aggressive mindset that wins games in the modern NFL.
Bad offensive coordinator hires
Saleh is a defensive coach. As we know, that is the road less traveled in the modern NFL. Offensive head coaches are preferred nowadays, and for good reason. It’s an offensive league, and when you hire an offensive head coach, you ensure your team’s offensive program can be firmly established for years to come (Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan, Andy Reid, Nick Sirianni, etc.). But when you hire a defensive coach, your offensive coordinator can get poached.
When hiring a defensive head coach, it’s essential that he hires a good offensive coordinator to be the captain on that side of the ball. Saleh is 0-for-2 in that department.
Hiring Mike LaFleur was a failure. Saleh went with a coach who he knew closely, which is fine, but considering how it panned out, perhaps Saleh should have opened his mind to outside options. It was also questionable to choose a rookie offensive coordinator when Saleh knew the team was probably going to have a rookie quarterback.
Hiring Nathaniel Hackett is looking even worse than hiring LaFleur.
In fairness, the Hackett hire was largely linked to New York’s plan to recruit Aaron Rodgers. However, that arguably makes the hire even more troublesome.
When the Jets hired Hackett in late January, there was no guarantee they would acquire Rodgers. As Rodgers himself later stated, he was leaning heavily toward retiring at that point in the offseason. Maybe the Jets believed they had a high chance of acquiring Rodgers, but it was definitely not a lock, so that means one of two things:
- The Jets knew Hackett was not their best OC option, but they were willing to risk riding out the season with a lesser option just to have the chance to get Rodgers
- Even knowing they were not guaranteed to get Rodgers and that Hackett might last with them all season with no Rodgers, the Jets truly believed Hackett was their best OC option
Both possibilities are bad.
If it’s option one, the Jets went too far to try and get Rodgers. Yes, most of us (myself included) agreed that it was fine to hire Hackett as long as Rodgers came, and nobody could have predicted Rodgers’ early injury. If the Jets knew they would get Rodgers with Hackett, then hiring Hackett was a fine move.
But the Jets didn’t know that. What if I told you in January that Rodgers was “90 percent” leaning toward retirement as he admitted later on? That’s the point in time we should be judging the Jets on, not how things eventually panned out and looked from March through August.
At that point in January, I don’t think anybody would have signed up for Hackett just to have a 10% shot at Rodgers. Perhaps Rodgers’ 90/10 percentages aren’t literal, but Rodgers is very deliberate with his words, so I believe he was telling the truth with that number.
If it’s option two, then the Jets just made a flat-out bad evaluation. Hackett was coming off a horrendous season in Denver and his career-long track record as an offensive coordinator is quite poor outside of the years he spent with Rodgers – where he didn’t even call the plays. Matt LaFleur was in charge of that offense. Saleh’s ability to evaluate offensive coaches must be seriously called into question if he actually believed Hackett was the best candidate.
On top of that, it would add to the case that Saleh relies too heavily on nepotism with his hires. Hackett, like LaFleur, has past experience with Saleh, sharing two years in Jacksonville with him. Has Saleh been constricting the Jets by limiting their options to people he knows closely? Nepotism is common in the NFL coaching world, but when one team’s nepotism leads to consistently poor results, it’s fair to call their decision-making process into question.
Regardless of how and why Hackett is in New York, Saleh and the Jets botched this one big time.
The Jets’ offensive ineptitude over the past three years falls largely on Saleh even if he isn’t heavily involved in it on a daily basis. He might not be one of the chefs in the kitchen who are responsible for cooking up the restaurant’s one-star Google rating, but he hired all of those cooks.
Saleh’s inability to build a strong offensive staff adds to the appeal of dumping him and hiring an offensive head coach.
Perhaps Saleh could be a much more successful coach if he had a good offensive staff behind him, but it’s fair to wonder if he is capable of making that happen by choosing the correct hires. Considering his inability to do that, the Jets would probably be better off long-term by moving on from Saleh and hiring one of the best available offensive minds to be their head coach, therefore ensuring they can establish a strong offensive program for the long run.
You can win with a non-offensive head coach in the NFL, but only with a good offensive staff. Dan Campbell nailed it on his second try with Ben Johnson while DeMeco Ryans appears to have done it on his first try with Bobby Slowik. Saleh’s had two cracks at it and has not come remotely close to finding the right answer.
Ultimately, this entire article is a moot point. Saleh is coming back in 2024. Hopefully, this list of reasons can serve as a guideline of what he must do better as a head coach to give his team a better chance of competing for a championship in 2024.
If the Jets get better luck with injuries and enjoy better quarterback play, I still believe Saleh has a chance to become a good head coach and potentially lead the Jets to the promised land. He was my No. 1-ranked head coach candidate in the 2021 coaching cycle and I thought the Jets hit a grand slam when they hired him.
With that being said, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to envision Saleh leading a Super Bowl-winning team as time goes on and he continues to do little to change the narrative around the New York Jets brand. He inherited the laughingstock of the NFL and 45 games later, the Jets are still among the greatest laughingstocks of the league.
Saleh must work to fix the issues we laid out today if he hopes to turn his career around in New York.
