The Jets landed their head coach with the signing of Robert Saleh on Thursday night.
What now?
Saleh has a big task ahead of him, along with general manager Joe Douglas. There are a lot of good feelings around the Jets after Saleh’s signing, but this is still a team that just turned 2 to 14, has a big question mark in the quarterback and a list with more needs than a newborn.
This will not be new to Saleh, who did his homework on the Jets just as they did with him. He knows what he’s getting into and clearly thinks the Jets’ job is good, because he probably would have received other offers if he had waited.
The to-do list is long for Saleh and Douglas. Here are the areas to work on first:
Hire a team
Coaching teams are underestimated. The media and fans focus on the head coach in these signings and usually on a coordinator, but it’s much deeper than that. A bad technical team can sink a good head coach. One of the biggest problems for Todd Bowles when he was with the Jets was his coaching staff. Rex Ryan had a great coaching staff at the beginning of his tenure, so he started losing key parts and the replacements didn’t work.
We know that Saleh wants to bring Mike LaFleur with him from San Francisco to be his offensive coordinator. LaFleur is highly regarded in the NFL and will bring Kyle Shanahan’s attack with him, so this move should get high marks. Apart from LaFleur, however, there was no whisper of who else is coming with him.
The key signing for me, after the offensive coordinator, is the offensive lineman. Jets desperately need a good one. Douglas said he wants to build the offensive line and these young players will need good training. Bill Callahan did wonders under Eric Mangini and Ryan with the Jets line. Recently, the training in that room was not good.
It is not yet known whether Saleh will be the defensive player. Even if he isn’t, he will certainly have a big stake in the defensive game plan every week. The Jets want him to coach the whole team and not focus on one side of the ball, but his defensive ability helped him get that job.
One of the things the Jets liked about Saleh is that he’s been in the NFL for 16 years. Some of the other candidates have much less experience in the NFL. Saleh knows people. He must be able to form a good team.
What to do with Sam?
With the coaching decision out of the way, Sam Darnold’s decision now weighs on the organization. Will the Jets stay with Darnold for another year or take a quarterback with choice # 2 in the draft?
Certainly, Saleh gave the team some opinions on the matter during the interview process, but the Jets have yet to make a decision. Douglas and Saleh will weigh the options and find out in which direction to take. The Jets need to assess college quarterbacks, find out what they could achieve in an exchange for Darnold and weigh all the factors before making a decision to change the franchise.
Evaluate your own
Saleh must delve deeper into the list before the team’s leadership begins to think about the free agency and the draft. Ultimately, the decisions on the list will be made by Douglas, but the GM said he wants the head coach to be his partner, so the two will work together on that.
Jets’ scale problems are well documented and will not be fixed overnight. The team is projected to have $ 70 million in salary cap space by Over the Cap. They have 19 players scheduled to be unrestricted free agents.
Its main free agent is safety Marcus Maye. Douglas said after the season that bringing Maye back is a priority. Should be. He was the team’s MVP and one of the few good players that the previous regime drew up. After Maye, the Jets must decide whether players like Jordan Jenkins, Brian Poole, Neville Hewitt, Tarell Basham and Breshad Perriman are worth rehiring.
Saleh got the job. Now, he has to work.