Robert Saleh is a well-known retread who lost his job in New York after having serious conflict with Aaron Rodgers. He is considered one of the best defensive minds in the NFL, and he has had very solid stints as defensive coordinator for the San Francisco 49ers. One of the things he is most known for, though, unfortunately, is his time as the head coach of the New York Jets from 2021-2024. This was a tenure of chaos as Aaron Rodgers destroyed any culture that was being built, and Zach Wilson was bringing his own controversy that I won’t mention because I want to keep this article PG. Now, most people don’t put too much blame on Saleh because of Rodgers and the organization he was working with at the time, but then the question comes in about if it really was Rodgers fault, or if Saleh was still to blame. So, to figure out if Saleh is a viable coaching candidate, we need to look into his past and what he brought to New York. So, this is the head coaching profile of former Jets head coach Robert Saleh.
Robert Saleh’s background
Before getting into his positives and negatives, it is necessary to look at what he did to get to this point. It all started at the college level for Michigan State, where he served as an offensive assistant, which is honestly kind of funny looking back. After a year, the coaching staff realized he was a defensive coach and made him a defensive assistant. After two years at Michigan State, he went to Central Michigan for the same job under Brian Kelly. He was seriously mistreated by Kelly at a party where he and Matt LaFleur had to do dirty work while everybody else was relaxing and warm in the middle of winter. This was so bad that they both promised each other that they’d never treat any of their employees like that when they climb. Anyway, since he couldn’t stand coach Kelly, he left that job for a similar position at Georgia, and soon after, he got called up to the NFL. In 2006, Robert Saleh became a defensive intern at Houston for two years and then got promoted to assistant linebackers coach in 2009. After two years there, he became the defensive quality control coach for the Seahawks. The Jaguars coaching staff was impressed with Saleh’s work and made him the linebackers coach in Jacksonville where he’d spend the next two years. After all of that, in 2017, Kyle Shanahan called him up and offered him the job as defensive coordinator for the San Francisco 49ers. After consistently coaching one of the best defenses in the NFL, Joe Douglas called Robert Saleh and asked if he wanted to be the next head coach of the New York Jets, which Saleh accepted. Obviously, the Jets’ tenure ended up not going well, which led to Saleh’s firing, which is still debated to this day about who was to blame. After that, he took a small job in Green Bay as an offensive consultant, more so as something to do, before going back to San Francisco, where he has killed it.
Now, Robert Saleh is a very interesting case, as he has a lot more positives than the typical retread because of how questionable his time with the Jets was. The first one is probably the one that has been talked about the most when it comes to Saleh’s positives, and that’s his connections in the NFL. He is the rare type of head coaching candidate who is a defensive mind. If anything, hiring Saleh might be better for Cam’s development than even some offensive-minded head coaches would be. There are so many names that come to mind with Saleh when it comes to who he would decide to hire as his offensive coordinator. If Mike McDaniel gets fired, that combination may be a shoo-in for the Titans or any team in general when it comes to the search. Or, how about Brian Daboll? They never really met up anywhere, but I’m sure they connected at some point, with them being head coaches just a few miles away from each other, and I’m sure they’ve connected with both of them being respected names across the NFL as well. If he can’t get a retread, though, he may be able to poach one of Mike LaFleur or Clay Kubiak from their positions. Even though they are already offensive coordinators, they could very easily be tempted by the allure of play calling and being given the duty of developing their own QB, and with offense being in a Kubiak’s blood apparently, and with how many offensive master minds LaFleur has rubbed shoulders with, they could very easily be very solid play callers and we just don’t know it. I know LaFleur was an offensive coordinator with Saleh, but how much can we judge him on having to call plays for Zach Wilson? Anyway, his offensive coordinator connections are golden. The other two big positives of Saleh are his defense and his culture/discipline. Look, one of the best parts of covering a retread is that we already know what some things look like, for example, how disciplined a Saleh-led team is, and how does he do with his specialty? Well, before Rodgers came in, the Jets’ culture was solid, and his teams were pretty disciplined. In his first two years, the Jets were ranked 18th and 17th in penalties per game, which isn’t great, but it’s better than anything we’ve had. He also had a solid culture, and he had his guys bought in, even with Zach Wilson doing Zach Wilson things. The biggest standout of the Saleh tenure, though, was how good his defenses were. After a mediocre first year for the defense, Saleh’s defense was ranked 4th in the NFL and was elite in pass defense, and his 2023 defense took a bit of a fall, but it was still ranked 12th, which is very solid. He was also never too terrible with clock management, and his teams would always fight for him. It even came out later that his players defended him in private, and his players also defended him in public. All of that is the stuff the Titans need right now, and he has head coaching experience on top of that, which makes him a great candidate for what the Titans are looking for and a great fit.
Negatives of Robert Saleh
The negatives are nowhere near as long as the positives, but the negatives are still very serious concerns that, for some people, take him out of the race completely. First off, although I do blame the Jets tenure mostly on bad QB management from the front office, and I do believe if Tyrod Taylor was the QB, those first 3 years there would’ve been better results, we still need to recognize how it felt like he was slowly losing the locker room as time went on. This could be more of a knock on Rodgers than it was on Saleh, but we don’t know that for certain. The reality Titans fans refuse to accept is that maybe Saleh was more responsible than we think, and maybe we’re over exaggerating how good Saleh actually was because of the serious chance that he ends up our next head coach. There was always talk about how the locker room was lost under his watch. Again, this could be more of a thing against Rodgers than Saleh, but he still isn’t pardoned from all blame just yet; he’d need another chance at a job to be fully pardoned. Also, even though I’ve talked about how good his defense has been, his rushing defense was always a big negative. Over his four years with the New York Jets, he only had one defense that ranked above the 20s. So, as good as his pass defense was, it was always more of a pick your poison with his defense because even though the pass D would be one of the best in the league on a consistent basis, there was also the run D that they always had to worry about. This is the thing Jets fans point toward the most when they defend the organization’s decision to move on from him, outside of the potential locker room problems. Now, this negative is something that actually could be completely reversed in Tennessee because of the Titans’ D-line. Most people know that Jeffery Simmons and T’Vondre Sweat are some of the best run-stopping D-linemen in the NFL, and Femi’s best quality when he was healthy was that even though he was raw, he could stop the run pretty well, and he was really catching on before he got hurt. The point is, add a pass rusher to this defensive line next year, I think the run-stopping could be much better under Saleh in Tennessee than in New York. Now, don’t take that as a guarantee from me; the run-stopping could be just as bad in Tennessee, and it is something worth worrying about. All in all, while Saleh has a smaller number of negatives, his biggest negative is enough for anyone, including the front office, to take him out of the race.
How likely is Saleh to get hired?
So, since I’ve gotten permission to do articles for MCM, the articles I have done were over coaching candidates that I don’t think are likely to land or pursue this offseason, so I thought I’d cover one this week. It was either gonna be this, or Mike Kafka if he won on MNF, which obviously didn’t happen. So, if that didn’t give it away, then I’ll spell it out: I think Robert Saleh is very likely to be the next head coach, not the favorite, but still very likely. I believe this because of his former head coaching experience and his hard-nosed attitude, which is so opposite of Brian Callahan’s. I 100% believe this dude will be a finalist at the very least, and honestly, he is my personal favorite of not only the retreads, but he is my favorite of all the likely head coaching candidates for the Titans. His offensive coordinator connections, combined with his tough attitude and what he brings to the defensive side of the ball, make him too good to pass up on. I also still believe he is better for Cam Ward’s development than a lot of the offensive coordinator candidates. Now, I do worry about his ability to fully keep the locker room for the next however many years, but again, there’s no real way of knowing that until he is fully separated from his time in New York. So I say, it is 100% worth the risk for the Titans to potentially get a culture-changing, hard-nosed head coach with a good offensive coordinator.