When Bill Belichick weighs in on the New York Jets, it’s rarely good.
He could hardly pass up the juicy opportunity to blast his most hated team along with the rest of the national media.
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“It is a little bit puzzling,” Belichick said on his Coach Podcast. “It is what it is, and everybody has to move forward. It’s the owner’s prerogative to make that decision, and clearly that’s what he decided to do.
“But there have been a lot of things that have been kind of confusing. It hasn’t been a great situation for the Jets this year. You can kind of feel there’s been kind of a chill.”
Generally, firing Saleh has been ripped as a “same old Jets” move, a panic move that will cause more chaos and not fix the Jets’ core issues. Belichick agreed with the sentiment that if Woody Johnson did not like Saleh after last season, he should have fired Saleh then.
Belichick also blasted the Jets’ team culture. “Just the overall culture, watching Hard Knocks from a year ago, there were a lot of things that just didn’t look quite right there,” he remarked. “The… organization, the appearance of dysfunctionality has been tough… It’s a total organizational effort, which it’s probably been for the last decade.”
This is one of the uncomfortable realities of players and coaches joining the media: they begin criticizing former peers openly. Belichick never would have commented on such a thing last season when he was the Jets’ divisional rival. He now has a platform to bash the team he once spurned over and over again.
Still, Belichick expressed respect for Jets fans.
“The Jets fans, as much as they got on me for a long time, I still respect the Jets fans for the passion for the team, even though it hasn’t had a great run here lately,” he stated. “They’re optimistic, they’re vocal, they’re very, very passionate. They have that base, they have that support.”
It’s up to the Jets and Jeff Ulbrich to prove Belichick’s criticism wrong.