Music City Miracles
Robert Saleh is a well-known retread who lost his job in New York after having serious conflict with Aaron Rodgers. He is considered one of the best defensive minds in the NFL, and he has had very solid stints as defensive coordinator for the San Francisco 49ers. One of the things he is most known for, though, unfortunately, is his time as the head coach of the New York Jets from 2021-2024. This was a tenure of chaos as Aaron Rodgers destroyed any culture that was being built, and Zach Wilson was bringing his own controversy that I won’t mention because I want to keep this article PG. Now, most people don’t put too much blame on Saleh because of Rodgers and the organization he was working with at the time, but then the question comes in about if it really was Rodgers fault, or if Saleh was still to blame. So, to figure out if Saleh is a viable coaching candidate, we need to look into his past and what he brought to New York. So, this is the head coaching profile of former Jets head coach Robert Saleh.
Before getting into his positives and negatives, it is necessary to look at what he did to get to this point. It all started at the college level for Michigan State, where he served as an offensive assistant, which is honestly kind of funny looking back. After a year, the coaching staff realized he was a defensive coach and made him a defensive assistant. After two years at Michigan State, he went to Central Michigan for the same job under Brian Kelly. He was seriously mistreated by Kelly at a party where he and Matt LaFleur had to do dirty work while everybody else was relaxing and warm in the middle of winter. This was so bad that they both promised each other that they’d never treat any of their employees like that when they climb. Anyway, since he couldn’t stand coach Kelly, he left that job for a similar position at Georgia, and soon after, he got called up to the NFL. In 2006, Robert Saleh became a defensive intern at Houston for two years and then got promoted to assistant linebackers coach in 2009. After two years there, he became the defensive quality control coach for the Seahawks. The Jaguars coaching staff was impressed with Saleh’s work and made him the linebackers coach in Jacksonville where he’d spend the next two years. After all of that, in 2017, Kyle Shanahan called him up and offered him the job as defensive coordinator for the San Francisco 49ers. After consistently coaching one of the best defenses in the NFL, Joe Douglas called Robert Saleh and asked if he wanted to be the next head coach of the New York Jets, which Saleh accepted. Obviously, the Jets’ tenure ended up not going well, which led to Saleh’s firing, which is still debated to this day about who...
