Robert Saleh's time as Jets head coach is over ... the team just fired him.
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00:00Welcome to TMZ Sports, I'm Mike Babcock with my guy as always, Mojo Moutadi.
00:11Buckle up, absolutely massive news in the NFL coming out of New York.
00:18The New York Jets fire head coach Robert Sala, not even halfway through the season, Mojo.
00:28This is, I think, shocking.
00:30Look, it's not that Sala is a good coach, a good head coach at least.
00:33I don't think he is.
00:34As a matter of fact, I think he's a pretty bad head coach, as has been evident by his
00:4020 and 36 record over his first three seasons as the Jets head coach.
00:45But it's not something you see very often in the NFL, Mojo.
00:50Owners firing coaches halfway through the season.
00:54NFL is a complicated game, and in my opinion, it almost always does not work out.
01:00But the bottom line is the Jets have lost two games in a row.
01:04They lost to the Broncos, that was an ugly loss at home to a rookie quarterback.
01:09And then they travel and they lose to the still undefeated Vikings led by their former
01:16quarterback Sam Darnold.
01:17Now Mojo, we'll get into some of the moves that were made here and some of the moves
01:22that were not made, namely that Aaron's offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett, we want to
01:27talk about bad coaches, Nathaniel Hackett, yep, there he is, Mojo, he stays in his job
01:33despite the Jets' inept offense.
01:35I mean, let's be honest here, the Jets have Aaron Rodgers, maybe the most physically gifted
01:39quarterback we've ever seen.
01:41They've got a Hall of Famer, a first ballot Hall of Famer playing left tackle for them.
01:45They've got Brees Hall, who a lot of people thought was going to be one of, if not the
01:48best running back in the league this year.
01:50And then they've got Garrett Wilson, who was one of the five or ten, at worst, ten
01:55best wide receivers in the league, another young guy, yet the offense has sputtered week
02:00in and week out.
02:02Mojo, what is the reaction amongst the NFL front offices and the people who just know
02:08what's going on with these organizations?
02:10Well, we were fortunate enough today to speak with a guy who was a former front office executive,
02:16a guy who was a general manager in the NFL, Michael Lombardi.
02:20We asked him for his reaction to what was a shocking news day coming out of New York.
02:26To me, it's usually what happens to most organizations when they are dysfunctional.
02:31I mean, it's too late.
02:33Like, you knew this problem last year.
02:35Now you only go five games in and you pull the plug.
02:38I mean, I don't know how, if Woody Johnson's ever been in his building before, because
02:43all the players have talked about since the start of this season is, where's the accountability?
02:48Well, there wasn't any accountability last year either.
02:51It just got blamed and pushed under the Zach Wilson rug.
02:54But I think to me, my question is, why would you do this now?
02:59Why did you give them five games?
03:00You knew this was a problem last year.
03:02And now you're swimming uphill, really.
03:05That's the biggest problem.
03:06You're swimming upstream to try to deal with it.
03:09You know, Mojo, the one positive thing, and I'm interested in your take on this, the season
03:13is still very much in front of the Jets here.
03:16They're playing the Bills, and the Bills have faltered the last couple of weeks.
03:19They are playing the Bills.
03:21If they win, they are in first place in the AFC East.
03:23Of course, the Patriots are a mess.
03:26The Dolphins don't have a quarterback.
03:27You want to talk about a team who can't move the football?
03:30Look at the Dolphins.
03:31So everything, as bad as it's been in New York for the first five weeks of the season,
03:36they can still salvage this season in a big way, can't they?
03:40Yeah, see, that's why this was so confusing to me.
03:44I agree with Lombardi in so many ways, and you bring up a really interesting point.
03:49This is not the time to press the panic button.
03:52I mean, you can still win this thing.
03:54Who cares if you're two and three?
03:55All you got to do is win the division to go into the playoffs.
03:59And to Lombardi's point, they knew what they had in a head coach prior to this season.
04:05Look, I mean, last year, if you wanted to fire your head coach, you know, for a failure
04:09to making a postseason run when the starting quarterback goes down and not building out
04:14a roster that has options when you lose your best player.
04:18I mean, there's something to that.
04:20I can absolutely see that.
04:22But dropping your head coach five games in when you're still in the hunt, I think this
04:28was a bad move, to be honest with you, Babcock, because this is only going to make things
04:33in New York worse, in my opinion.
04:36I mean, usually in this situation, if you need a fall guy for a slow start, we finally
04:42got Rogers back after his injury, totally tanked last season.
04:45We finally got him.
04:46This is supposed to be our year and we're two and three.
04:49Maybe you let go of a coordinator in that situation.
04:53I mean, obviously not going to be the offensive coordinator coordinator, given his history
04:58with Aaron Rogers back in green Bay and how strong of a relationship they have, you know,
05:03the defense.
05:04I don't know if that makes sense to drop that guy either.
05:06So, I mean, if that's what they're thinking by dropping the head coach, but now we look
05:10what happens when a team does drop a head coach mid season, you're activating someone
05:15to take the reins on someone else's team.
05:18Who's now going to expect all that work that's been done through camp.
05:22In the beginning of the season, you're trying to take this team in a completely different
05:26direction that they haven't been coached up on, or you're just another guy trying to do
05:30the other guy's scheme.
05:31In which case, neither of those things are necessarily great ideas.
05:35By the way, I didn't say this.
05:37Jeff Albridge, who was the DC is now the interim head coach.
05:40I don't know that that makes the offense any better, especially when you keep the same
05:43guy in there as the OC.
05:46It makes it clear who still runs this team.
05:49I look, there's an owner, there's a GM, there's a new head coach.
05:53Now, Aaron Rogers is the guy who calls the shots.
05:56It's the reason that Daniel Hackett was not fired today.
05:59They should, if they were going to fire Salah, they should have fired Hackett too.
06:03He's the guy who this really, I think, the blame falls on.