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Somebody asked me –
“Are the Jets moving to fast with Robert Saleh?”
The Jets flew in Saleh in for a second interview this week, and he seems to be a leading candidate for the job.
My answer to this person was simple:
“If it was just a couple of businessmen/lawyers in the room doing the interviews, yes they are rushing, but not with Joe Douglas in the room, they are not rushing.”
Unlike businessmen/lawyers, Douglas is a pure football guy, who know what to look for in a coach, the right questions to ask in the interviews, and the right people to call around the football world to vet the candidates properly.
So, with Joe in the room, it’s not a rush.
And if they are speeding up the process with Saleh, it could be related to other teams being interested in him, like Philadelphia.
The Eagles fired Doug Pederson on Monday, and seem to be hot for Saleh.
But if Saleh is deciding between Philly and the Jets, to me, the Jets would be the easy choice.
First of all, they have the better talent evaluator in the GM office in Douglas. As we brought yesterday, Eagles GM Howie Roseman clearly misses Douglas, who was his right hand man from 2016-19.
Also, the Eagles have a major salary cap mess, and the Jets have plenty of space, and a lot of high draft picks.
So the Jets offer a better partner in Douglas and more resources to land quality players to turn it around fast.
Douglas is going to pick the players for the next coach, and this probably one of the reasons you haven’t seen a lot college candidates emerge. Most college coaches, who obviously pick all their own players, aren’t as comfortable having somebody else do it for them.
An NFL coordinator candidate is much more apt to agree to the set-up of the GM picking the players and the coach coaching them.
Another reasons Saleh is a hot candidate for the Jets is he’s looking to bring a 49ers offensive assistant, either passing game coordinator Mike LaFleur or running game coordinator Mike McDaniels with him to be the offensive coordinator.
And this is a huge factor related to the Jets QB position, especially if they want to make another go at it with Sam Darnold. The Kyle Shanahan-system, which LaFleur or McDaniels would bring with them, is very QB-friendly and makes it the game pretty easy for the signal-caller.
“Shanahan’s system, the stretch bootleg system, you create a lot of easy opportunities for the quarterback,” said former NFL scout Bucky Brooks of NFL Network. “You just need to be mobile enough to get to the edge of the tackle box on the bootleg. If you can do that, you can play in this system, and with all the play-action, they make it easy.”
That offense, which LaFleur or McDaniels would bring, sounds perfect for Darnold.
So aside from Saleh’s head coaching potential, which is obviously the #1 factor, the fact that he could bring this QB-friendly system to the Jets with his coordinator choice, is another thing that intrigues the Jets about Saleh.
January 13, 2021
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