The New York Jets made a random and surprising move this week when they fired head coach Robert Saleh heading into Monday night’s battle with the Buffalo Bills.
There were rumblings of Saleh getting canned in the offseason, but just five games into this year, with a healthy Aaron Rodgers, those rumblings had quieted down quite a bit before owner Woody Johnson dropped the bomb and decided he had seen enough.
CBS Sports’ Jonathan Jones and Brock Vereen discussed the firing on Sunday morning and Vereen said, “Anybody could watch this team and say, ‘hey, the offense is not where it needs to be.’ You publicly disagreeing with your quarterback as far as how to go about that, you’ve put all the power in Aaron Rodgers’ hands.”
“Woody Johnson feels this is an uber-talented team, and two losses to the Broncos and then the Vikings made him decide that something needed to change,” Jones said.
On today’s edition of JJ’s Journal, @jjones9 brings the latest on Robert Saleh, and @brockvereen weighs in pic.twitter.com/MoXO8Isoei
— NFL on CBS 🏈 (@NFLonCBS) October 13, 2024
Vereen noted how Saleh gave away all his leverage by doing this because it becomes Aaron Rodgers’ team when you sign him, so especially when you are a defensive-minded head coach, it’s a poor move to disagree with your future Hall-of-Fame QB.
It was obvious things weren’t going smoothly, but a 2-3 start never felt bad enough to fire Saleh especially after he had to endure years of Zach Wilson and still found ways to win games.
Todd Downing will now be taking over offensive play-calling, and he is not someone who is going to make fans feel warm and fuzzy inside, as he has opened himself up for a ton of criticism with his offensive struggles in recent years.
It has been a tough week in New York, but all of it will be put behind them if the Jets can take out the Buffalo Bills on Monday.
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New Jets Coach Reveals How Players Have Responded To Change
