How can you say he’s not involved with any of the phases of the game? You say that because he doesn’t call plays? He’s letting his coordinators do his job, big whoop. And again, you’re thinking that he didn’t have the same exact coach with the same exact job last year.
Incorrect, they may not have been looking to get out, they just got a better offer. You’re inferring they couldn’t stand to be a part of the Jets.
Passing is a lot easier when you have a great OL and a lot harder for the opposition when you have a great Pass rushing DL.
He said it himself he was not involved, and wouldn’t get involved when asked in particular about giving Ulbrich some suggestions because defense was so bad. I’m not making any of this up. However, I do believe that his answer was just for the media, when in reality he may be in on meetings and adding his two cents.
Me neither. No one should have a better finger on the pulse of his team than the HC. He's with these players every day. He sees them on the practice field and knows what they are good at, and not so good at. He knows which player is dinged up and playing at 70%. All this stuff. This should mean more than a nerd who says "Hey coach, since 2015, teams that go for it convert 54% of the time".
I'm not impressed by Saleh either which is why I think it's a good thing they have a guy to take some stuff off his plate during games.
There's plenty of evidence. Most studies of positional importance in the NFL have QB, WR, CB, S, and TE as the top ones. If you look at the best defenses in the last several years they're almost exactly the same as the defenses with the best secondaries.
Of course, but that's not the point. Passing is also a lot easier when you have great WR's. Great WR's can overcome bad OL's to an extent through getting them the ball quickly. Even Myles Garrett can't get to the QB in 2 seconds unless the OL doesn't touch him. A great OL also isn't turning Denzel Mims into Ja'Marr Chase but great WR's can make a bad OL less consequential. And yes, pass rush matters, but apparently not as much as coverage. The downside potential of having bad safeties and corners is that you're liable to give up a huge TD at any point. A bad pass rusher isn't ideal but it's not possible for him to single handedly blow a play and allow an 80 yard TD pass.
There’s no way that Saleh just allows his coordinators to make a gameplan without him being involved. Now the level of involvement is up for debate. I doubt he’s in MLF’s and Ulbrich’s offices drawing up Xs and Os with them 24/7. He most likely meets with them once or twice a day to get a rundown on what they’re thinking for game day and that’s when Saleh puts his .02 in.
Yes but he’s also too nice of a guy. The question is when the coordinators are wrong is he stepping up? For example when Ulbrich is proposing his stupid gameplan of keeping the safeties back 25 yards every play, is Saleh asking him why or telling him not to. I honestly don’t think he is that guy. If he wants to win he’s gonna have to be that guy though
I agree up to a point. There's some value in understanding tendencies and trends, but to let the numbers drive all your decisions is wrong. It drives me crazy to see managers and coaches rely on "the book" regardless of the situation. And it stems from a CYA attitude: if they make the decision "by the book" and it goes wrong, they can say, "Well I went with the percentages and what the numbers told me". Bullshit. As for this signing, if he's going to assist running the game, fine, but if Saleh is delegating that job to him, then that's also bullshit. Frankly - call me a dinosaur - but I'd much prefer they go back to the days when QBs (or MLB's) made all the calls, and I would even go a step farther and make it like soccer where the coach is prohibited from being an active participant during the game. Wishful thinking I know, but I believe the players on the field have a better feel for the flow of the game, and they should be given the freedom to play the game without becoming like players in a video game run by coaches.
I almost always agree with you LA, but here I somewhat disagree. Yes, there are some more aspects to managing the game since the days of "3 yards and a cloud of dust", but it's not rocket science either. I don't dispute that having someone next to the HC to be a reminder of certain key situations is a good thing, and even being the guy ready with the handy clipboard or tablet that can quickly show the odds of success of various plays in the situation on the field, but I would hate for this guy to be the "crutch" a HC comes to depend on, or to take the place of a coach's feel for the game. Maybe there's not any real difference between that and what you described but that's my 2 cents.
Could also be the safeties they’re playing are just too stupid to realize what they’re doing on the field. I think it had to do with playing cover 1 and the Jets safeties not having enough range or recovery speed to play sideline to sideline so they compensated by playing deeper. The Jets 3rd down defense drove me up the wall this year. 3rd down was almost always cover 1 and they constantly got beat up on man beating routes. How many times did we see guys getting open and running for 5-6 yards after the catch to get a first? They gotta fix that shit or I’m gonna start to lose faith in this CS.
I hear you. I don’t believe that to be the case or at least sure hope not. Great coaches use the position to quickly get a centralized source of info and options for the HC to process and make a decision. Not calling the play. For example, heads up coach, 20seconds to the 2 minute warning, no challenges left for them. Rams D against third down and more than 3 to go, when in the red zone will do xyz 85% of the time with player x or w blitzing from the edge. Over.
Great post CC you summed it up perfectly. Last year I watched the Mets manager just destroy a season. Pulling a pitcher who was dominating in the 5th inning. I'm glad they went old school and hire Buck Showalter. Sports is very simple baseball hit the curve and play good defense. No need to muddy up everything having these guys' heads all jumbled up.
Can you imagine some pocket protector nerd going up to the late great Billy Martin and telling him the percentages say bunt here. Martin would have said did I ask you for your advice. Get out of my dugout before I lose my shoe kicking your a%$
Ok if the wrong play is called who gets the blame? The nerd or the head coach. This job is about accountability and delegating only goes so far. There shouldn't be any situation a head coach has not witnessed, learned from, or utilized. You gonna bring some analytics squirrel who probably never played sports at all just has a mathematics degree from Princeton.
Now I would be on board with dumping Ulbrich as long as the nerd help dumps LaFleur also. That would be a great start. I wonder if the finger pusher would have told Zach to run a QB sneak against the Buc with 2 gigantic DT's on their line? What did the calculator say the percentages of that being successful. Cause I was in shock that that was the play they came up with. One of the dumbest calls ever and the Jets have had some doozies.
I'm not implying anything at all but you may be inferring that and that's on you. And I'm saying we don't know how it went down that the guy is gone. We don't know if he was told to go find something somewhere else because we are going to make changes or if the guy decided on his own to leave, whether money was an issue or not. We don't even know how much the guy was paid last year and how much he'll be paid at his new job, do we? We also don't know how much the new guy was making last year and what he'll make here, if that matters. What I really want to know is if the Jets organization was unhappy enough with the performance that they recognized changing some coaches was necessary or would they have been okay with the status quo; I thought I already made that pretty clear.