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The Jets landed their head coach with the hiring of Robert Saleh Thursday night.
Now what?
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 hired, but it’s still a team that just went 2-14, has a huge question mark in the quarterback and a roster with more needs. than a newborn.
This won’t be news for Saleh, who did his homework on the Jets like they did on him. He knows what he’s getting into and he clearly thinks the Jets job is a good job as he probably would have had other offers had he waited.
The to-do list is long for Saleh and Douglas. Here are the areas to work on first:
Hire a staff
The coaching staff is underestimated. The media and the fans are focusing on the head coach in these recruitments and usually a coordinator, but it goes much further than that. A bad coaching staff can sink a good head coach. One of the biggest issues for Todd Bowles when he was with the Jets was his coaching staff. Rex Ryan had a great coaching staff early in his tenure but then started losing key elements and the substitutes didn’t work out.
We know 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 offense with him, so this move should get high marks. Beyond LaFleur, however, there was no whisper from who else would come with him.
The key hire for me after the offensive coordinator is the offensive line coach. The Jets are in desperate need of a good. Douglas said he wanted to build the offensive line and that these young players will need good coaching. Bill Callahan has done wonders under Eric Mangini and Ryan with the Jets line. Recently, the supervision in this room has not been good.
It is not yet known whether Saleh will be the defensive player. Even if he isn’t, he will surely have a big part 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 expertise has helped him secure that position.
One of the things the Jets loved about Saleh was that he has worked in the NFL for 16 years. Some of the other candidates have much less experience in the NFL. Saleh knows people. He should be able to put together a good staff.
What to do with Sam?
With the chief coaching decision set aside, Sam Darnold’s decision now occupies an important place in the organization. Will the Jets stay with Darnold for another year or take on a quarterback with the second pick in the draft?
Sure, Saleh gave the team some opinions on this topic during the interview process, but the Jets have yet to make a decision. Douglas and Saleh will weigh the options and determine which direction to go. The Jets must assess college quarterbacks, figure out what they might get in a trade for Darnold, and weigh all the factors before making a decision to change the franchise.
Evaluate their own
Saleh needs to dig deep into the roster before team management starts to think about free will and the draft. Decisions on the roster will ultimately be Douglas’s, but the GM has said he wants the head coach to be his partner, so the two will work closely on them.
Jet roster issues are well documented and will not be resolved overnight. The team is expected to have a salary cap of $ 70 million per Over the Cap. They have 19 players programmed to be unrestricted free agents.
Their best free agent is security Marcus Maye. Douglas said after the season bringing back Maye was a priority. It should be. He was the team’s MVP and is one of the few good players drafted by the previous regime. After Maye, the Jets must decide whether players like Jordan Jenkins, Brian Poole, Neville Hewitt, Tarell Basham and Breshad Perriman are worth signing again.
Saleh got the job. Now he has to get to work.
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