Mike doesn’t mess around

Perhaps it was a little harsh, but he did it.

Talking about Tennessee Titans coach Mike Vrabel firing four assistant coaches following the team’s disappointing playoff loss to the Cincinnati Bengals.

Vrabel fired inside linebackers coach Jim Haslett, assistant defensive line coach Kenechi Udeze, assistant special teams coach Matt Edwards, and assistant strength and conditioning coach Mondray Gee.

The Titans were the #1 seed in the AFC, had a first-round bye and home-field advantage through the AFC playoffs, but lost in the divisional round to the Bengals.

Vrabel sent a powerful message on Monday that this loss was unacceptable, and unfortunately, four men paid with their jobs.

And this takes me to the Jets.

They went 4-13, and finished in last place, but so far no staff changes that we are aware of.

I want to make one thing perfectly clear. I’m not calling for anybody to be fired. I am dead set against firing anybody in print. These are people with families and bills to pay.

So I don’t want anybody to get the wrong idea.

However, when you have a 4-13 season, which featured a number of blowout losses, some things need to change. The status quo won’t cut it.

And you could make the argument the Jets don’t necessarily need to fire any coaches, but add some, or at least one.

I wrote this in a recent issue of Jets Confidential Magazine that Robert Saleh could use a “bench coach” to borrow a baseball term, and I brought up Don Zimmer as an example. Zimmer also won four World Series rings with the Yankees as Joe Torre’s bench coach. He was an amazing sounding board for Torre, with a lifetime around baseball as a player and coach.

Saleh could use a former NFL head coach, as a first lieutenant, somebody who has “walked a mile” in a head coach’s shoes. He didn’t have anybody like that on his staff last year. I brought up former Denver Broncos coach Vic Fangio as a good candidate, Saleh’s first NFL boss with the Houston Texans in 2005.

Somebody like that would be great for Saleh, or any young NFL head coach. It’s a tough job rife with surprises you often don’t see coming.

Look, the Jets have a lot of work to do this off-season. We all know that. They need to upgrade the talent at certain positions, which they should be able to do with myriad premium draft picks and plenty of cap space. But beyond that, other things should be tweaked, like some aspects of the playbooks. Hey, you could say that for most teams. You do a deep dive in the off-season at what went right and what went wrong strategy-wise, and you make the requisite changes.

But reading the tea leaves, and some social media accounts, you get the sense that some in the brass blame the record last year on the cost of doing business when going really young in a rebuild.

There is no question that was part of the reason they struggled, but some of the issues went beyond that, and the brass just can’t paint every issue with the “young movement” brush.

So some things about the operation need to change, and Joe Douglas needs to make sure some changes are made. He has the power to do that as boss of the coaching staff.

However, one thing we don’t know is if Douglas is comfortable forcing the coaching staff to make changes, or does he just want to focus on player personnel. Some GMs just want to focus on acquiring talent. Not saying that about Douglas, just saying it’s a mystery to the outside world whether Douglas is truly acting like a football czar, or just a player personnel czar.

Once again, big off-season for the Jets, but it’s not just about player procurement.

January 26, 2022

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