Thursday night’s loss to the Browns was Robert Saleh’s 50th game as the Jets head coach.
The 37-20 loss was another depressing defeat for Saleh in a tenure with the team that has not gone as he planned. Saleh is 17-33 as Jets coach, a .340 winning percentage that is the lowest among the eight men who have coached at least 50 games for the Jets.
If you just saw his record, you would think Saleh would not be back in 2024 as Jets coach. But CEO Woody Johnson has said Saleh and general manager Joe Douglas will return for another season. It is an understandable decision considering the team lost Aaron Rodgers on the fourth play of the season and blowing up the coaching staff with Rodgers set to return next season does not make sense.
Still, Saleh will enter his fourth season with plenty of questions remaining about whether he is built for the job. Saleh has done good things with the Jets. He has flipped the culture from where it was under his predecessors. He has a strong locker room. He has built a top-10 defense that, other than Thursday, has played well for most of the season.
But Saleh has work to do this offseason on becoming a better head coach. When he was hired, Saleh was expected to be more of a “CEO” coach, one who is not fixated on one side of the ball. The Jets had Adam Gase, who focused his energy on offense, and Todd Bowles and Rex Ryan, who focused their time on defense, before Saleh.
Before Saleh was hired, Christopher Johnson described what the team was looking for in its next head coach.
“I don’t much like the term ‘CEO,’ but it does describe what we’re looking for,” Johnson said. “We want a head coach that coaches the entire team and his staff. You don’t have to be offensive, you don’t have to be defensive. This is a coach for the entire team. That’s very important to us looking forward.”
Though Saleh has accomplished this in some regards, he has failed overall to put his mark on the offense. Saleh came in talking about “All Gas, No Brakes” and the defense plays that way. They are aggressive, relentless and have a distinct style of play. On offense, Nathaniel Hackett is a far cry from “All Gas.” He is more like the guy doing 35 mph in the left lane with his blinker on. The offense has no identity. They’re offensive philosophy seems to be get the ball to Breece Hall and Garrett Wilson and hope they can break one.
This offseason, Saleh needs to spend more time on his offense. The return of Rodgers will help, of course, but he won’t cure everything. The Jets offense needs to play more like its defense when it comes to attitude and style of play. Saleh does not need to dictate scheme to the offensive coaches, but he needs to have the offense catch up to the defense. That starts in the spring in OTAs and carries over into training camp.
The offense has felt like it was along for the ride for too long with the Jets.
Saleh also needs to work on his gameday operation. There are too many communication errors. On Thursday night, they were flagged for 12 men on the field, then had to burn a timeout in the third quarter because of a formation error. They took a delay of game on a field goal when they did not have enough players on the field. There needs to be better attention to detail.
The scrutiny that Saleh will be under in 2024 will be more intense than anything he has experienced. He will be on the hot seat from the start and he will no longer be given the benefit of the doubt. Saleh needs to prepare himself for that. If the Jets start 1-2, there will be questions about his job.
Woody Johnson gave Saleh a mulligan for 2023, but there will not be another one in 2024. The Jets have one more game to play this season against the Patriots. Then, the page turns to the 2024 season.
Saleh likes to tell his players that when you’re writing the story of your own life, you should never allow another man to hold the pen. The pen is in Saleh’s hand for 2024. It will be up to him whether that is the end of his story with the Jets.
