The New York Jets have fired Robert Saleh after a lackluster performance in London against the now 5-0 Minnesota Vikings. Saleh was on the hot seat coming into the season, and a 2-3 start when the team felt it had assembled a contender was not good enough in the eyes of the Jets. Defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich will serve as the Jets interim head coach for the remainder of the season, as they hope to turn their fortunes around and get back in the playoff hunt.
Even with how bad things have felt, the Jets are only a game back of the Bills in the AFC East and still believe they should be a contender this year and beyond as long as Aaron Rodgers is under center. It’s possible Ulbrich will right the ship and earn himself the full time job this offseason, but should the Jets continue treading water and not make any noise in the playoffs, you’d expect owner Woody Johnson and the front office to begin a full coaching search. What will be fascinating if they do open things up is what kind of coach they want to get.
That is likely dependent on what they think of Rodgers after this season. If he looks good and will be coming back, I’d expect them to go with a veteran head coach, and likely one with more of a defensive pedigree because we know Rodgers has his preferred offense and would likely want Nathaniel Hackett to remain on board. If Rodgers never really gets it going, even if he’s back for one more year, the Jets may do what most teams do in this situation, which is chase an offensive mind to open things up after firing a defensive coach. Here, we’ll look at five candidates on both sides of that coin who should figure into the Jets interview process in 2025.
Bill Belichick
Belichick is going to be linked to any team that has playoff potential. The Jets not only check all the boxes for what the future Hall of Famer would want out of a team on the field, but they also would present a unique opportunity to stick it to Robert Kraft and the Patriots a bit by joining a divisional rival. Belichick didn’t exactly leave the Pats on the best of terms, so joining the Jets (where he was once the head coach for literally one day) would be quite the move. The question, of course, is whether the Jets want to go with a coach who isn’t likely going to be around for a long time in his next stint, but that could also be said about their QB, so pairing those two for one last run might make some sense.
Ben Johnson
On the other end of the spectrum from Belichick is Lions OC Ben Johnson, who would give them a young, up-and-coming offensive coach who passed on job offers this past summer to give it one more go with a Lions team he felt could win a Super Bowl. Whether or not that happens this year in Detroit, Johnson should be one of the top candidates again in this upcoming cycle and if the Jets are seeking an offensive mind to take over, they could do much worse than Johnson, who has designed an offense that gets the most out of Jared Goff and the Lions skill position players. On top of that, he should have learned well from Dan Campbell about building a strong culture in a place that’s lacked that for years, which would benefit the Jets tremendously.
Brian Flores
The whole suing the NFL thing makes it hard to figure exactly how teams will view Flores as a head coaching candidate right now, but there is no doubting his work in Minnesota as defensive coordinator. He has the Vikings defense terrorizing opposing offenses — including the Jets in London last week — and is doing some incredible stuff in terms of disguising and changing coverages and looks before and after the snap. What that shows is that he is getting a ton of buy-in from the guys in Minnesota, because it takes full commitment from everyone on that defense to do the things he’s asking them to do. His time in Miami wasn’t great, but he also wasn’t exactly given a real opportunity to succeed. If the Jets want to stick with a defensive mind given the makeup of their team, Flores should be near the top of the list.
Bobby Slowik
The Texans offensive coordinator has been, like Johnson, a hot name on the coaching market for the past year, and as Houston keeps plugging away with CJ Stroud and company looking good once again, he figures to factor even more into the interview process this offseason. As noted earlier, teams tend to look at the other side of the ball after firing their coach, but the big question Slowik or Johnson would have in interviews is whether Rodgers is going to insist on keeping his guy, Nathaniel Hackett, on board as OC. If that’s the case, I’d expect another defensive coach running the show, because an offensive guy should not be willing to take this job if they can’t be hands on with the offense to the degree they’d want/need to.
Mike Vrabel
I was surprised when Vrabel didn’t seem to get any interest after being let go by Tennessee this offseason, but his Titans teams were always competitive — even if not particularly explosive offensively. If establishing a culture is something top of mind for the Jets brass with their new hire, I’d expect Vrabel to be in the mix, and he’d also probably be fine keeping Rodgers’ preferred offensive system around.
