EMERGENCY POD: Jets Fire Head Coach Robert Saleh

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It's early.

We're five games in.

Obviously, we'd like it to be a lot better,

but it's early and we've got a long way to go.

Oh my goodness, oh my God, Robert Salah is out, reported this morning by ESPN's Adam Scheffter.

The New York Jets have fired their head coach after starting the season two and three.

Defensive coordinator Jeff Oldbrick will be the interim head coach, according to a source, told ESPN.

And it ends Salah's tenure suddenly after a 20 and 36 run.

There is so much to unpack here.

Stunning turn of events around the Jets who enter this season in terms of expectations, in terms of all in, in terms of pressure to win right now, the Jets are one of those examples in the years we've covered this and really in recent NFL history of the teams that really pushed all their chips in the center of the table.

So, Robert Sala being pushed aside after a slow start is a very intriguing move and maybe a bit of a Hail Mary for a Jets ship that was taking on water quickly.

Dan Hans is here with Mark Sessler.

Heed the call.

Sestog,

you know, these, things were going well for the Jets after that Thursday night football game against the Patriots, but a really ugly, grim loss at home against the Broncos, followed by what happened in London and, you know, the slow start against the Vikings and Aaron Rodgers throwing three interceptions.

The Jets obviously decided they needed to change something right now.

And the only question now is, or questions, why now and who was behind this?

Yeah, I think there are multiple questions around this situation because you're right.

I think you can look at how quickly this suddenly came to this place.

In the last two games, it matter a lot.

The Broncos game was slightly inexcusable.

You looked at that just as a W on your schedule.

And we looked at the London game as like, come and prove to us against a very good Vikings team who you are.

You went and got this quarterback.

You created this offense.

You've got the defensive head coach who's got one of the best defenses in the league metrics-wise.

I mean, they really, he did his job on that side of the ball.

And you fall to the Broncos and you are embarrassed by the Vikings in London, and you've got a long airplane trip home.

And I wonder if that cauldron, that voyage back to New York,

maybe brought some of this to a head because there are whispers.

We knew already that there were issues.

And we get into this in a second, Dan, between the owner, the head coach.

Aaron Rodgers and Sala certainly didn't seem like two P's in a pod.

Where is Joe Douglas, your general manager, in this?

Where was the Devontae Adams trade?

It's like one of these teams with four or five major moving parts.

The organizational structure is confusing.

It seems to be one that creates controversy.

And I'll ask you, because I can think of one other time in our past podcasting history where I was rustled out of bed to rush to the studio to do an emergency show on a coach firing, and that was Hugh Jackson.

And it was, you know, Mark, how do you feel about all this?

And how do you feel?

And like, the other emergency show was Deshaun Watson.

And that seems to be happening to the same two, three or four or five teams in this league that can't figure it out.

Dan, how do you feel?

Because, I mean, two summers ago, you had immense hope.

And for a reason, this past offseason, you were measured.

But where on earth are you now as a Jets fan?

Well, it's complicated, as it often is as a Jets fan, because

I don't think Robert Salah was the answer.

I don't think this team was ever going to win a Super Bowl with Robert Salah.

I've been saying it for a year and a half on this podcast, that I thought he is not the right guy for the team.

I felt that he got over-promoted, and he will land on his feet.

and he's got another year left on his contract after this.

So he's going to collect paychecks.

He's going to get a DC job somewhere and he's going to look really good doing it.

I would not be surprised if Sala has success in this league.

I don't know if as a head coach, but he can coach ball.

He could coach one side of the ball.

And so the decision here makes sense to me because I don't think he was someone that really could bring a team together and understood how to take the offensive side and bring it to the defensive side and create an actual team team that you could put up against the best in the league.

It makes sense that a change was made.

And defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrick now takes over as the interim head coach and we'll see what he does.

He was kind of impressive on hard knocks a couple summers ago.

But the problem is, while the firing in a vacuum makes sense, overmatched head coach

off to a slow start in an all-in year for the franchise, like getting rid of him and trying to inject some fresh life into the team, that all makes sense.

The process behind it all is what makes you feel why

this might not all work out no matter what, because the dysfunction around this organization continues to just permeate.

And in this situation,

Robert Sala was done in, and let's make no mistake, Robert Salah was done in by Aaron Rodgers.

Like, yes, Salah might have been overmatched, but the reason why this is happening now is because Aaron Rodgers runs this organization, and he's run this organization from the moment he was traded to this organization.

And I am sick and tired of the Jets

PR propaganda machine and our old place,

you know, peeing down our leg and telling us it wasn't raining when all these signs were there.

I mean, I just go through what's happened with this team in the last six months.

There was the Egypt trip that Rogers took that Salah went up to the media and said, hey, this is unexcused in terms of an absence.

And then Rodgers having an answer to all that and that becoming the big story of the summer around the Jets.

You know that chafed Rogers.

There was the sideline shove incident in the Patriots game, which otherwise was maybe the high point of Robert Salah's Jets' career, where Rodgers refused a hug from Sala.

All this caught on the TNF cameras and then glared at him as he walked away.

Again,

nothing to see here.

Nothing to see here.

That was nothing.

That was an inside joke between us.

Sure, guys, sure, guys.

There washtag Cadencegate, Mark, where Robert Sala, after that ugly week three or the Denver Broncos loss in the rain a week ago

came up to the podium after the game and said, maybe the reason we had all these pre-snap penalties is our cadence is too complicated and we got to scale it back.

Aaron Rodgers built his legend in part on his ability to manipulate at the line of scrimmage with cadence.

And we talked about on the Thursday preview show, the

disgust dripping from every word Rodgers said and the glare

that he sent back at the media when he heard in real time that his head coach had said that his cadence was causing the problems, not the players around him.

And then finally, and this one's a little more personal to us, Mark.

On our old show, Colleen Wolf, our dear friend, and we miss her and

we stay in touch, and she's the best, right?

Like,

she was on our show last spring, and in a kind of a matter-of-fact end-of-show moment, she mentions that she had been told

by someone she trusts that Robert Sala and the owner, Woody Johnson, had gotten it in type of animated discussion that was not a pleasant discussion at the owners' meetings.

And the NFL machine and the Jets machine all came crashing down on our show, on Colleen, and Colleen was forced to apologize for it.

Now, let's do the last part of it, Mark.

How many other coaches did Woody Johnson fire in the middle of a season in his 25 years, quarter quarter century running the Jets?

Zero.

That would be zero.

Yep.

Do the math.

Justice for Connie.

Dysfunction permeates and it all rolls downhill.

It is justice for Colleen because she had a very reliable source, eyes on the subject at the owners' meetings.

This wasn't just some gossip piece that came through a game of operator.

It came directly from a reliable source.

And also, Colleen wasn't flamboyant in the way that she talked about what was was happening.

She was matter of fact.

And I think it was no surprise to many people that a conflict like that might bubble up because it just didn't seem like it was working.

And to see how some of these teams, because you know, writing for the league for over a decade, you'd write a story and there was a group of maybe three to five teams that would react right away if it wasn't positive, if it wasn't shiny, shiny like a little bell.

And the Jets were always one of those teams, very PR, reactionary.

They came down hard on this and used their power.

Woody Johnson tweeted about it, and everyone went nuts.

And it's like, you little bad boys and this little girl that gave this report, you go back to...

No, no, no, no, no.

See, this was correct, and it pointed a long time ago to exactly what was going on with the Jets.

And this was a weird,

this is one of these teams where I just came to believe, with all the talking points you just mentioned, that Sala, the head coach, and Aaron Rodgers, the quarterback, seemed to just see football and the experience of football and the process of preparing and how you go about a game differently.

I just felt like Aaron Rodgers seemed to lose respect for his head coach.

And now, we don't know that, but it certainly seemed that way compared to, you know,

Mike Holmgren and Brett Franklin.

I think we know it, Mark.

I mean,

we know enough

what Rodgers' role in this organization is.

The head coach disappearing after five games, there is a straight line between what Rogers thought of Sala and Sala now being on the street.

And

you could say that that's a bad look for the Jets, and it is.

It really is, because it shows everything they've been trying to tell you is not the case, is the case, that this guy is running the show.

And do you trust a 40-year-old quarterback who's become quite an eccentric man over the years to be lording over this team in all ways?

And there's also going to be a side of this mark of like, okay, Salah maybe was overmatched as a head coach.

Maybe he wasn't quite the guy that the Jets thought they were getting because he always fit the, he looked the part, right?

And I think the Jets liked that he looked the part.

He was tall and imposing and handsome, and he spoke well, and he just seemed like a good steward of the franchise.

But he was overmatched, and you saw that week after week, really his whole tenure, this team always got off to slow starts.

He never had them ready to go.

As well as the defense played, the offense was always so many steps behind with the dysfunctional quarterback play.

And I can imagine, again, if Woody Johnson had his doubts about his head coach,

if Sala sold his survival in the organization over these years as, hey, man, you've never given me a quarterback who could play.

And now they're struggling again with Aaron Rodgers, maybe those are the type of things that pushed Salah out the door.

But make no mistake, I think this came directly from Aaron Rodgers.

And maybe, hopefully, we'll get more reporting.

And there are a lot of great reporters covering the Jets that really dig into this story because it's delicious in terms of the Palace intrigue.

I mean, to me also, the wrong coach from a certain angle was fired.

And I'm not saying that Salah should have stayed.

And I think we may be differ on Salah just a little bit, but come on.

Like, the problem all along here was Nathaniel Hackett's offense.

And this was a situation where it's not just Aaron Rodgers, but it's like Aaron Rodgers and like an in-law who's like living in your house.

Like he wouldn't, he refused to be flexible on the idea of changing this offense of having a different offensive coordinator and this was the least creative to watch offense in the league outside of Cleveland a complete disaster and it's like you have a quarterback who is a Hall of Fame quarterback Looking not himself and the players around him not playing up to their level and it's like Nathaniel Hackett stays and the head coach goes.

The quarterback, of course, stays.

The head coach goes.

We don't know about the general manager, but the general manager's track record at this point is starting to look like real hot and cold because there's some hits and there are some massive misses.

And so we can pretty see, you can see where Woody Johnson's aligned to.

And Robert Sala seemed like a man on an island by the end of this.

Yeah, I'm wondering where Joe Douglas fits in on this.

Like, was Joe Douglas, you know, not

involved?

I mean, I'm sure he was involved, and maybe he was prominently involved, but was this an Aaron Rodgers is talking a Woody Johnson thing?

Would that shock me?

It would not.

Because it seemed like Douglas and Sala had a good relationship.

But again, we're going to see as more things come out.

And you're right.

You can't fire the head coach who at least had the defense playing at a high level these past three years and then look the other way on Hackett.

But again, follow the breadcrumbs.

We all know that Aaron Rodgers and Nate Hackett are close.

So Hackett survives and Salah, who was not close and did not have a relationship with Rodgers, goes.

And, you know, we'll see.

And I don't, but Devontae Adams going to the Jets seems even more a slam dunk to me now because Rodgers just, he is pulling the strings and it's never been more obvious.

So that's where you're going to go.

If you're Devontae Adams, is this where you want to go to a team that fired its coach an hour ago?

Like, I mean,

your problem is that you're with a team that fired its coach a year ago and things look shaky.

So is this really a landing spot?

I guess it depends how, if, let's say, Aaron Rodgers picks up the phone and calls Devontae Adams and said, hey, the biggest problem we had is out of of the building now.

Things are going to be better now.

That might actually be something that Devontae Adams could be sold on.

I guess that's the other way to look at it.

But, man, but going back to your original question as we wrap this up, this emergency podcast, always fun,

Mark, yes.

It's never good news.

It's never a good emergency.

No, no.

Do I think, well, it could be.

Like, I feel for Sala in the sense that he is a good guy.

He always seemed like a good dude.

But at the same time,

I think it's the right move for this team because of the stakes, because of the state of the AFC.

We were saying it on the Monday night recap.

Obviously, the Chiefs are the Chiefs, and the Ravens have shown the ability to play at a high level.

And the Texans do, you know, they have a 4-in-1 record, and they have, obviously, Super Bowl aspirations that are not unrealistic.

But the AFC is wide open.

The AFC East is wide open.

The Jets, for all their dysfunction, they just fired their coach, and they're playing for first place at home on Monday night against the Bills.

So So getting a Sal out the door and maybe injecting some life in this building and galvanizing the unit, I think is a risk worth taking.

But how they got there and the transparency, not they didn't mean to be transparent about it, but how easily telegraphed all this was.

I'm just with this team after 35 years of being a fan.

I'm just so sick of the dysfunction.

And

now I'm going to sit in this chair and tell you, well, maybe this will turn out for the best, But I've seen this movie so many times and everything is pointing to this season going a certain direction and this just being the latest soap opera element of it.

So I'll be stunned if the Jets turn it around at this point, just because it just seems like it's a full-on circus and circuses rarely end well.

I hate the circus, hate clowns.

I think

what they do to the bears.

Totally overrated the circus.

They put the little people in the cars and like just fill the car up.

It's like, we don't need any of that.

The Jets and the circus have gone together

for far too long, and this is just the latest chapter.

So let's see what happened.

By the way, our buddy Mike Dugar just sent this text.

This is a report from Jay Glazer on Twitter.

Just talked to Robert Sala, who said he was blindsided by Woody Johnson walking to his office and letting him go.

Certainly disappointed he wasn't going to be given the opportunity to get things going with what he said is a very good roster.

So if it was a surprise to us, think what it was to the head coach who's got his head down at his desk preparing for the bills.

And he looks up and it's the goddamn owner telling him it's time to put your things in a box.

So it's a tough business, Marky.

Tough business.

You know,

I think if you're any coach heading to London, you're on red alert because it just never seems to go well on these London trips.

But blindsided, that...

That makes sense and it just tells you that it also tells you, you know, before we go, like the owner and coach were not communicating.

It wasn't like, look at like, here's how I'm feeling, but let's see where we are in two weeks.

It's like they're not communicating.

In swoops, Woody Johnson to blindside a coach that had no concept that he was about to be fired.

Crazy.

Hashtag justice for Connie.

Oh, yeah.

Hashtag justice for Keith.

Hashtag old Zuzzer.

He's feeling it.

He's in pain.

So much hope.

And here we are, a tornado of doubt that we're all swirling in his Jets fans.

Let's see how it plays out.

Because the one thing I know, Mark, is that it won't be boring what happens with the Jets.

You have a bunch of primetime games still ahead and Aaron Rodgers at the center of everything for good or bad, for better or worse.

Let's see what happens next.

Okay, we'll be back tomorrow with Connor Orr, who used to cover the Jets, and I'm sure the story will develop.

We'll get more there.

Obviously, the Devontae Adams saga will be all over that and everything else.

Thanks to everyone, Emergency Podcast, concluding now, Mark.

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