The Jets fired their head coach Robert Saleh on October 8 and their general manager Joe Douglas on November 19.
Fair or unfair, neither had a good won-loss record and as Bill Parcells always said, “You are what your record says it is.”
Now they have an interim head coach, Jeff Ulbrich, and interim GM, Phil Savage.
Whether the Jets retain Ulbrich and Savage or replace them with two other people after the season, flipping coaches and GMs isn’t necessarily the panacea.
They have done this many times over the years. They aren’t alone. Other NFL organizations have been serial coach/GM flippers, and often the results don’t change.
The Jets might need to tweak other aspects of their organizational approach.
One of the better decisions in team history was in 1997 when owner Leon Hess eschewed the committee approach, which allowed lawyers and money managers to be involved in football decisions, and threw the car keys to Parcells.
While they didn’t win a Super Bowl, they did advance to an AFC Championship game, and the culture over Parcells’ three-year reign was strong.
So it’s not just enough for the Jets to hire a new head coach and GM – lather rinse, repeat.
They need to hire a head coach and/or a GM (it could be one person with all the power like Sean Payton in Denver), throw him the car keys, give him a budget, and let him do his thing, sans the influence of the business side.
Like Hess did with Parcells.
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