I Cannot Wait for Aaron Rodgers to Pretend Firing Robert Saleh Wasn't His Decision

In times of trouble, when things seem to be in a perpetual state of chaos, the center cannot hold and anarchy is loosed upon the world, there's one constant we can all cling to. And I  am grateful for it. The New York Jets are always gonna New York Jets. Today is no exception:

And made team history in the process. Just not the kind they were planning on:

Once again, for the billionth time, I find myself saying that if this franchise didn't exist, I would've had to invent it. Few things in this life can cheer me up when I'm feeling blue like the incessant, perpetual, insane dysfunction of the J!E!T!S!, as constant in my life as the North Star is in the heavens above. 

There's a lesson to be learned from a coach getting fired after starting a season 2-3. And it's got nothing to do with Woody Johnson getting embarrassed on a foreign soil where he was one the US Ambassador. There's no shame in losing to the Minnesota Vikings. As it stands, they're the best team in football. Not only 5-0, but have a point differential of +63, which is 19 points higher than anybody else's. 

No, this has nothing to do with Jets' ownership. At least not in the sense of who bought the team and writes all the checks. In a de facto sense, the person who owns the Jets is Aaron Rodgers. Robert Saleh has been working for him since he signed on in the spring of 2023. And the performance reviews from his supervisor have not been going well:

Advertisement

From the moment Saleh dared suggest his boss' cadence was a source of the Jets' struggles, he was coaching on borrowed time. And that payment came due with Rodgers' stat line in London:

29-of-54, 244 yards, 2 TDs, 3 INT with a Pick-6, and a 54.9 passer rating

Clearly that was the result of bad coaching. 

And the lesson I mentioned earlier? It is that this is what happens when you give complete control of your football operations over to a player. When you flip the power structure of a team over into an inverted pyramid, things are doing to descend into madness. 

The Jets hired Nathanial Hackett to make Rodgers happy. They signed five of his former Packer teammates to make Rodgers happy. Especially his close pals Randall Cobb and Allen Lazard to make Rodgers happy. Yet as is so often the case when you bend over backwards to give someone everything they want to make them happy, Rodgers is not happy. And someone not named Aaron Rodgers has to pay the price. That's what giving absolute power to an employee does to a billion dollar operation. 

Not that Saleh is without fault here. As Brian Baldinger points out, even the most basic fundamentals of this team are a mess. And the blown blocking assignments have gotten on the QB's last nerve:

And that might have been the moment Jets Director of Football Operations Aaron Rodgers decided he needed to make a coaching change. But like I said in the headline, the real fun of this is going to listening to all the denials. From Rodgers, first and foremost. There's not a chance he comes clean and admits this was his call. That Saleh found himself in a power struggle with a Hall of Fame quarterback and it was total asymmetrical warfare he could not win. All the talk will be about how this came from the top. It was an organizational decision. Doing what's in the best interest of the team. They needed a fresh approach. Blah bitty blah. While we all know that this was done strictly to placate the 41-year-old to whom they've granted full control of all decisions. And they know that we know. 

Listening to them try to spin this some other way is going to be one of the great joys of this season. A season where once again, the Jets are the most entertaining team of them all. Don't ever change, you crazy kids.