Gang Green Nation
Ulbrich took the thankless job of serving as Jets interim head coach this past season.
Jeff Ulbrich, who worked for the Jets as interim head coach and defensive coordinator, has a new job. He is taking over as defensive coordinator of the Atlanta Falcons.
Ulbrich was well-regarded for his work with the Jets defense in 2022 and 2023.
Then early in the 2024 season, owner Woody Johnson put him into an impossible situation. Ulbrich, who had never been a head coach before, was tasked with turning around a sinking Jets team full of big names and big egos on the fly. Predictably, it did not go well.
Ulbrich recorded a 3-9 record in his role as interim head coach. The defense saw a large backslide. How much Ulbrich can be blamed for that is up for debate. The unit certainly regressed a lot after the departure of Robert Saleh, who is one of the top defensive minds the league regardless of his shortcomings as a head coach. Ulbrich retained the defensive coordinator job, feeling after the loss of Saleh there would be too much change if he didn’t remains hands on. On some level, that was an understandable decision. However, it perhaps stretched Ulbrich too thin and prevented him from doing either the head coach or coordinator job well.
While Ulbrich was nominally a candidate for the Jets head coaching job and received an interview, the team’s poor performance under his leadership ended any realistic possibility of him landing the top job on a permanent basis.
