Did firing Robert Saleh really tank the New York Jets’ defense?
On the surface, the answer appears to be a resounding yes. The Jets had the worst defensive EPA per play in the NFL following Saleh’s dismissal.
However, there was a far bigger issue associated with the Jets’ defense — one that may have sunk them as the season progressed even if they had not fired Saleh. Maybe things wouldn’t have gotten quite as bad as they did, but maybe they would have.
The question is why a defense purportedly fielding very similar personnel from the previous season would suddenly go down the toilet. But the truth is, the Jets didn’t field very similar personnel, thanks to how they approached the defensive line in the offseason.
It started with letting Bryce Huff walk. Even if that was Woody Johnson’s doing (as Johnson reportedly stopped Joe Douglas from making an offer to Huff), it removed the most efficient pass rusher in the league. Huff may have only played 42% of the Jets’ snaps in 2023, but those 42% were largely in the most important passing situations.
Sure, Huff could not replicate his success in Philadelphia (thus far), but that may be because the Jets used him better (4-3 edge rusher vs. 3-4, almost exclusively a pin-the-ears-back pass rusher).
If the loss of Huff gained widespread notice among the Jets’ fan base, Quinton Jefferson’s departure was mostly overlooked. Sure, there was some grumbling about signing Javon Kinlaw to a $7.25 million deal, but the narrative seemed to brush that off and assume that Saleh could work his magic once more.
Never mind that Saleh was Kinlaw’s defensive coordinator in the past or that Kinlaw played next to Javon Hargrave and Arik Armstead in San Francisco.
An even less heralded move was the Jets’ signing of Leki Fotu to replace Al Woods. People saw 334 pounds and assumed that meant “great run stuffer.”
Never mind that Fotu had been one of the worst-graded run-defending defensive tackles according to Pro Football Focus in each season of his career. Never mind that the film completely matched those grades and that Fotu was perhaps the worst 334-pound run defender in the NFL.
The nail in the coffin was trading John Franklin-Myers for pennies. Franklin-Myers was the Jets’ best edge run defender and their second-best interior pass rusher. Ostensibly, Haason Reddick replaced Franklin-Myers, although he was never expected to replicate Franklin-Myers’ run defense.
In summary, the Jets took Bryce Huff, Quinton Jefferson, Al Woods, and John Franklin-Myers and replaced them with Will McDonald, Javon Kinlaw, Leki Fotu, and Haason Reddick. Losing Huff and Jefferson were virtually guaranteed downgrades in pass rush; the same applied to Woods and Franklin-Myers in the run game.
Of those four moves, the only realistic upgrade was going from Franklin-Myers to Reddick as a pass rusher. And even in that area, what was overlooked was the cumulative effect of replacing Huff and Franklin-Myers with McDonald and Reddick, which was likely to be a net downgrade in terms of consistently generating pressure (because Huff was a far more efficient pass rusher than McDonald and Franklin-Myers’ pressure rate was very similar to Reddick’s in virtually every season except 2022) even if it brought an uptick in sacks.
There were dual perceptions about the Jets’ defense that both proved incorrect: that it could make up for any losses in depth and pass rush talent, and that its coverage was so good that pass rush did not matter as much.
The truth is that even though the Jets’ coverage bailed out their pass rush at times through the past two seasons, there is only so long that any defender can cover. With referees beginning to key on Sauce Gardner’s and D.J. Reed’s handsiness, it became even harder for them to cover for three-plus seconds.
There were certainly other factors involved, such as all three starting cornerbacks and a starting safety (Chuck Clark) being in and out of the lineup with injuries on a regular basis and not having the veteran captain of the defense (C.J. Mosley) out there to prevent coverage busts and adjust calls as necessary.
But the biggest losses for the Jets were undoubtedly up front. Even if Reddick’s long-term holdout and precipitous drop in production had not happened, the line as a whole was extremely thin and lacked the high-end pressure upside that it enjoyed the previous two seasons.
During the 2024 offseason, I spoke to Cody Alexander of Match Quarters about many aspects of the Jets’ defense and coverage. He had extensive praise for both Gardner and Reed. Ultimately, though, when I asked him whether coverage or pressure is more important, he immediately responded that the linchpin of all passing defense is the pass rush.
In general, the NFL agrees. The highest average annual value among cornerback contracts is Jalen Ramsey’s $24.1 million, and there are five cornerbacks with an AAV of $20 million or more. There is only one safety with an AAV of $20 million or more (Antoine Winfield Jr., $21 million).
Meanwhile, the highest AAV among edge rushers is Nick Bosa’s $34 million, and there are 12 edge rushers with an AAV of $20 million or more. It’s a similar story for defensive tackles: $31.75 million is the highest AAV and 14 defensive tackles with an AAV of $20 million or more.
When it comes to the valuation of each position among NFL teams, follow the money. The teams clearly place much more stock on the defensive line.
Part of this may be the variability in cornerback play. Most cornerbacks have a narrow window of success, and their performance fluctuates from year to year. It’s one of the things that made Sauce Gardner’s back-to-back All-Pro seasons so impressive. Even Patrick Surtain II had a mediocre 2023 season before bouncing back as a strong Defensive Player of the Year candidate in 2024. This is the history of all cornerbacks.
But that just emphasizes why pressure is more important. It tends to be more consistent from year to year. If a team has players who have been good pass rushers in the past, it is far more likely that the pass rush success will continue.
Therefore, the single biggest factor in the Jets’ struggles this season may have been the hits they took to their pass rush. Obviously, losing Jermaine Johnson thinned out their depth severely; playing Micheal Clemons on 54% of their defensive snaps was a killer.
But even before Johnson went down, the Jets played with fire by letting three of their four best pass rushers from the previous season walk. To boot, they took big chunks out of their run defense by failing to adequately replace Woods and Franklin-Myers.
That is obviously not the sole reason for the Jets’ defensive decline. They predicated their defense on the assumption that they would be playing with leads, which did not materialize. But even under that assumption, letting Huff and Jefferson walk was an abject disaster.
Some will debate this idea by pointing out that the Jets’ defense was far stronger under Saleh. However, keep in mind some of the offenses the Jets faced through the first five weeks: Tennessee, a Jacoby Brissett-led Patriots team, and a Bo Nix who hadn’t yet thrown a touchdown pass and threw for 61 yards against the Jets. Yes, they made Sam Darnold look silly, but they were also a sieve against the 49ers. In three of those five games, they could not generate much of a pass rush.
I think there is an argument to be made that the Jets’ defense might have fallen off significantly even if they had not fired Saleh. Maybe it would not have been to the same extent as with Ulbrich, but there were signs of dysfunction in the first five games, too.
The seeds of the Jets’ defensive demise were there all along. Few teams can decimate the best part of any unit and expect the status quo to continue. The Jets were no different.
