Jets Dysfunction: Who's The Leak?
Happy birthday, Robert Saleh! In honor if that, here are 50 reasons why the New York Jets are a mess under your leadership.
That's how Wednesday's bombshell report from The Athletic made it seem.
Entering his fourth year as head coach of Gang Green, Saleh was pronounced safe after a disappointing 7-10 finish in 2023 due to the rash of injuries the team suffered, and his closeness with Hall-of-Fame quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
As he prepares for another offseason though, the latest leaks coming out of 1 Jets Drive paint a picture of a head coach who is more likely to search for excuses why the team struggled in 2023 than solutions.
"He wanted to see how teams led by the NFL’s best coaches performed when playing without their star quarterback. …That became Saleh’s battle cry as the Jets’ losses piled up and criticism mounted: What do you expect? We lost Aaron Rodgers," Zack Rosenblatt and Diana Russini reported Wednesday.
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Saleh is not absolved from blame for the Jets' recent run at futility. Sure the franchise's 13-year playoff drought predates when the former defensive mastermind arrived in 2021, but he's done little to show that he is the right man to end the current longest playoff drought in the top four of American sports.
It also doesn't help that leaks have run rampant under his eye - so much so that when a November report stated that former second-overall pick Zach Wilson refused to return to the playing field after being benched, and Rodgers openly chastised the organization for the leaks, the "paranoid" Saleh tried to find exactly who was leaking news to the press.
"That sent Saleh into a tailspin," The Athletic reported. "The coach held a meeting with his staff two days later where he asked the leaker to reveal himself, according to multiple people in attendance. “If you come forward now, you won’t get in trouble,” he told them while threatening to take their cell phones. Staffers were bemused by Saleh’s obsession with the Wilson story and his reaction to it."
All of this is, of course, a terrible look on New York's head coach.
It also realistically glosses over the bigger problems the Jets are currently facing. Problems that go well beyond Saleh's job as head coach.
And it all starts at the feet of the leader of the front office: Joe Douglas.
Douglas arrived in 2019 and has revamped an organization that was seriously devoid of talent for years. Shrewd draft selections in 2022 have put the franchise on the precipice of becoming a contender with the addition of Rodgers last off-season.
When things didn't go according to plan though, Douglas' inaction was a bigger cause for New York's regular season struggles than anything Saleh did.
Wide receiver Corey Davis retired a week before the regular season began. The Jets decided to put their faith in undrafted rookie free agents. Four plays into the season, Rodgers was lost for the year. It took New York multiple weeks to bring in a free-agent quarterback. Finally, when the offensive line was going through 13 different starters and 13 different combinations, the front office did not address the position at the trade deadline, or sign a player that saw the field.
Douglas' inaction was a key reason for the Jets' struggles in 2023. It's why he and Saleh are going into 2024 on the "hot seat." If New York does not end the playoff drought next year, there's a very good chance that massive organization upheavals will be underway.
When things like this happen, it's commonplace for leaks to run rampant. Executives, coaches, and even players want to distance themselves from a shrinking ship and do their best to portray their actions better than others.
That's why The Athletic's report, while citing 30 different sources both outside and inside the organization, reeks of a front-office push to deflect blame for the team's struggles. Sure, Douglas was laughingly mocked for deferring to Rodgers, but the kind of leaks centered around Saleh and his coaching staff are of a different sort.
Some of the leaks may certainly be departed coaches looking to give a middle finger to the organization as they walk out the door, but the specificity of the leaks, and the sure amount of intel received, points to a push by the front office to distance themselves from the current coaching regime.
It may certainly be rich for someone like Douglas to blame Saleh and his staff for the team's shortcomings - he was, after all the general manager that hired him three years ago.
But when accountability comes calling, it's every man for himself.
Dysfunction never seems to end in Florham Park, and it won't until the organization starts piling up wins.
For Saleh and Douglas' sake, that better start early in the 2024 season.
