JETTING TO A NEW WORLD!
Gang Green introduces Saleh, who announces several coaches
Robert Saleh has cleared the bar that trips up a lot of NFL coaches: not seeming visibly deranged in his first day on the job.
“Everything we do is designed to win championships in the future” was the type of tone set Thursday.
It sounds like the lowest bar on Earth, but the last coach the Jets introduced, and the other coach introduced in the NFL Thursday, fell well below it.
Saleh, the first Muslim hired as an NFL head coach, largely spoke in soothing banalities at his introductory press conference Thursday, repeating his “all gas, no brake” motto. He emphasized the importance of personal connections with players and said coaching in New York felt like destiny after his brother escaped the South Tower on 9/11.
“It felt like I was home speaking to my high school friends,” Saleh said of his two-round interview process with the team.
“There was no doubt when I left this building. It was home.”
“Sometimes there’s that notion of coaches coach and players play and I’ve never taken to that notion,” the famously high-energy Saleh said. “Coaches and players are in this thing together. I believe that the investment that coaches should put into players should be the equivalent of the investment you put in your children. You gotta invest everything you have in your heart and your soul into those players because they’re relying on you to help them be their absolute best so they can showcase their skills on Sunday...When you get that investment reciprocated, it becomes personal.”
It was a stark departure from Gase, who fed the press odd excuses about Ryan Tannehill’s poor stats in Miami and appeared to have his eyes bulging out of his head.
And it was a clear contrast with Dan Campbell, who couldn’t stop talking about teeth on Day 1 of his six-year deal with the Lions. “We’re gonna kick you in the teeth and when you punch us back, we’re going to smile at you,” Campbell said. “When you knock us down, we’re gonna get up and when we get up we’re going to bite a kneecap off.”
Saleh, while well-versed in coach speak, was the good kind of forgettable while clearly confident and comfortable in his own skin.
He did inadvertently break a bit of news: Falcons linebackers coach Jeff Ulbrich will be the team’s defensive coordinator. Ulbrich was promoted to defensive coordinator after Atlanta fired Dan Quinn midseason and promoted defensive coordinator Raheem Morris to interim head coach.
Saleh appears to match with the Jets’ stated desire for a socalled “CEO” coach after a run of one-sided coordinator types with Gase, Todd Bowles and Rex Ryan.
He said Thursday that Ulbrich would be calling the plays despite Saleh’s recent experience as the defensive playcaller in San Francisco. Ulbrich will run a 4-3 scheme, like Saleh did as defensive coordinator in San Francisco.
The Jets announced much the rest of Saleh’s staff after Thursday’s presser. One notable exception: a special teams coach. Saleh says he hasn’t decided whether to retain Brant Boyer from Gase’s staff.
DEFENSIVE HIRES
• Aaron Whitecotton as defensive line coach. He was an assistant defensive line coach with the Niners, Bills and Jaguars the last five years.
• Whitecotton’s assistant defensive line coach will be former Eagles assistant Nate Ollie.
• Chip Vaughn, Ricky Manning Jr. and Hayes Pullard are joining as defensive assistants. Vaughn was with the Jets last year; Manning and Pullard are former NFL players in their first coaching jobs in the league.
OFFENSIVE HIRES
• On offense, Saleh and the team confirmed the hiring of Mike LaFleur as offensive coordinator. LaFleur, the brother of Packers coach Matt LaFleur, will run the Mike/Kyle Shanahan-style offense. “Lots of presnap movement, help for the quarterback, marrying the run to the pass,” was Saleh’s pithy description of the offensive style that has taken over the NFL in the last two years. “Nobody in the world knows it better than he does,” Saleh said of LaFleur.
Under LaFleur, the team announced the hiring of nine other offensive assistants on Thursday.
• Rob Calabrese as quarterbacks coach; Calabrese comes from Denver, where the NFL rejected the team’s request to have him suit up for a game when the team’s QB room was wiped out by contact tracing.
• John Benton as offensive line coach; he had the same job
the last four years in San Francisco. Saleh referred to him as the “run game coordinator” on Thursday.
-Jon “Taylor” Embree as [b] running backs coach; he was a quality control assistant with the Niners since 2017.
• Veteran NFL tight end Ron Middleton as [b]tight ends coach, [/b]the same job he had in Jacksonville the last eight years. (Saleh was a Jaguars assistant from 2014-16.)
• Former Cowboys receiver Miles Austin as receivers coach. He was out of the league last year after spending three years on the Cowboys/Niners staffs.
• Greg Knapp as passing-game specialist after three years as the Falcons’ quarterbacks coach.
• Todd Washington, Mack Brown and Billy VandeMerkt as offensive assistants.
Washington and Brown are holdovers from Gase’s staff, although Brown is switching sides of the ball.