Long before his mid-season firing, Robert Saleh reportedly tried to fix the New York Jets’ offensive situation in the offseason.
According to an article by The Athletic’s Dianna Russini, the Jets’ former head coach tried to hire another offensive mind to replace Nathaniel Hackett’s role in the offense.
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“It’s also hard to ignore that Saleh, according to league sources, tried to recruit multiple different offensive coaches during the offseason in an attempt to get things right on that side of the ball. The Jets spoke to Eric Bieniemy (now UCLA’s offensive coordinator), Kliff Kingsbury (now the Commanders’ offensive coordinator), Luke Getsy (now the Raiders’ offensive coordinator) and Arthur Smith (now the Steelers’ offensive coordinator).
“Saleh wanted to add a great mind to the offensive staff, and if he had succeeded, he might still have a job, but it proved too difficult to make an addition since he didn’t have an ‘offensive coordinator’ title to offer.”
Additionally, Russini added that Aaron Rodgers had an impact on the search for an offensive mind in the offseason.
“Rodgers was involved in the process to add a new coach, so he at least knew something needed to change, but he wasn’t going to boot Hackett. So Saleh ran it back with mostly the same offensive coaching staff, other than new running backs and wide receivers coaches.”
It is important to note the context of when this article was released. Saleh’s firing happened less than a week ago, and this information is consistent with how a leak intended to spin things in a positive direction would be handled.
However, there seems to be at least a decent amount of truth to the article. Multiple reports were released in the offseason that detailed New York’s pursuit of now-Steelers offensive coordinator Arthur Smith, and those reports also said the former Falcons head coach declined the offer due to it not being an offensive coordinator position.
Regardless of how the information came to be, the Jets put themselves in their current situation. Saleh chose this current offensive coaching staff, just as general manger Joe Douglas signed off on Saleh’s staff. The best the Jets can do is work with what they have, and their first opportunity to do so will be tonight against the Buffalo Bills.
