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CLEVELAND — The last time Robert Saleh walked into the tiny news conference room at the Browns’ stadium, sounds of celebration trailed behind him from the New York Jets’ locker room. That’s what happens after an improbable, come-from-behind win.
Thursday night, it was the sound of silence.
That’s what happens after a 37-20 blowout loss, this one clinching the Jets’ fourth straight season of at least 10 losses — three of them with Saleh as head coach. This team is often finding new ways to lose, appearing undisciplined, oft-penalized, mistake-prone and sometimes unprepared, like on Thursday night. At this point, it’s fair to wonder if even a healthy Aaron Rodgers would’ve been enough to overcome this team’s problems — and Saleh, as the head coach, is at the center of them.
The Jets looking this undisciplined, the most penalized team in the league, does not reflect kindly on him. They were penalized 12 times Thursday, and 15 times last week. In the first quarter against the Browns, the Jets were called for having too many players on the field on offense, the most damning of their many penalties. The Jets fell behind 27-7 in the first half after a comedy of errors on offense and defense. As his team unraveled, Saleh stood on the sideline, stoic. As the 49ers’ defensive coordinator, he used to roam the sideline with fire and passion. As the Jets’ head coach, Saleh’s face has turned to stone.
At the end of a somber postgame news conference, Saleh was asked why he didn’t seem particularly upset or angry with Thursday’s outcome.
“I’m not quite sure about that question,” Saleh said. “Do you want me to throw the podium on the floor?”
In the past, Saleh has seemed perturbed about questions about the frequent penalties, especially when it has been suggested that those issues have something to do with a lack of discipline. He’d bite his tongue, attempting to avoid criticizing NFL officials — which is how coaches get fined. But he was out of answers, or excuses, for the penalties on Thursday night, as that problem becomes too big to pass off as inconsequential.
“I gotta figure it out,” Saleh said. “I gotta figure it out. There was a lot of pre-snap stuff today. A lot of pre-snap stuff today. But we gotta figure it out.”
He said “I gotta figure it out” again after a follow-up question about that first-half penalty for too many men on the field.
Wide receiver Garrett Wilson had a better answer.
“It’s not clean enough. I’m frustrated when something like that happens,” Wilson said. “There’s no excuse for it. We gotta clean that stuff up. It can’t happen. It kills drives. We’re not doing enough to overcome it, we haven’t been all season. If we were, maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But the reality is things like that have killed our drives all season and we haven’t fixed it. So, we gotta fix it.”
Trevor Siemian is tackled by Za’Darius Smith in Thursday’s second half. (Scott Galvin / USA Today)
That has been the biggest flaw of the Saleh era: The things the Jets struggle with most never seem to improve over the course of a season. They still struggle on third down (6 of 16 on Thursday), remain stagnant in the red zone (0 for 1) and keep getting penalized at an unusual rate. They’ve been one of the NFL’s worst first-quarter teams all year, outscored by 56 points in total — including 20-7 on Thursday.
At least the Jets finally scored a touchdown on their first drive, the first time they’ve done that all season. It was an impressive play-calling sequence by offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett, who hasn’t had many of those in 2023. It started with a 22-yard completion from Trevor Siemian to Wilson on a quick pass on the second play, followed by a 25-yard Breece Hall run, a 5-yard Hall run and then a 21-yard touchdown catch by Hall.
It only took 17 weeks for the offense to start fast like that, but it didn’t ultimately matter much after how the defense opened the game. The offense never scored another touchdown, either.
Defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich had planned to let cornerback Sauce Gardner travel with Browns star wide receiver Amari Cooper — the Jets never travel their cornerbacks — but those plans were thwarted when Cooper was scratched due to an injury. That didn’t seem to matter much. On the Browns’ first drive, Joe Flacco hit tight end David Njoku for 36- and 28-yard completions — both the result of poor tackling and coverage by Jets linebackers — to spur a seven-play, 75-yard scoring drive. On the next drive, a 43-yard completion to Njoku set up another touchdown.
By halftime, Flacco had already thrown for 297 yards and he finished with 309, snapping the Jets’ streak of 33 games without allowing a 300-yard passer.
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“It was horrible. We just didn’t execute, man,” cornerback D.J. Reed said. “The play-calling was flawless. (Ulbrich) put us in position to make plays. We just had mental errors or we just didn’t tackle … it’s just execution. There’s things we normally pick up. I don’t know if the lights were just too bright on this stage. But football is football. It’s just simple coverages … we just didn’t execute.”
Saleh said the Jets defense was “slightly off in regard to technique.”
But how does a “championship-caliber defense” (Saleh’s words, repeated since the offseason) have technique issues in Week 17?
“Technique stuff happens every game on every play, but we pride ourselves on precision,” Saleh said. “Obviously, we have to look inward. I have to figure out what we can do better with regards to the week on short weeks to ensure that we keep our precision from a play-calling standpoint and that we’re putting our guys in a position to be comfortable with what they’re asked to do. There’s a lot of things I have to look at first before I start looking at our players.”
Defensive end Jermaine Johnson returned an interception 37 yards for a touchdown in the second quarter, and the defense stepped up in the second half — 61 total yards allowed, 13 passing yards, 3 points — but it was too late. Other mistakes, like running back Israel Abanikanda’s muffed kick return in the first quarter, or Siemian’s pick six that came shortly after, were too much to overcome.
That has been the story of this season: Too little, too late.
“This whole season has been frustrating,” said Hall, who accounted for 126 yards and a touchdown. “I’m motivated every week but I worked my ass off this offseason to come back (from ACL surgery). I expect to be one of the best in the league and I couldn’t really show that the whole season. I just tell everybody to get their laughs out now because it’s not going to be like that in the near future. We’re going to be a lot better.”
But is Saleh the right coach to get them there? Owner Woody Johnson told the New York Post that Saleh — along with general manager Joe Douglas, who shares a significant role in the Jets’ downfall — would be back in 2024.
The Jets are 6-10 and Saleh is 17-33 through 50 games as Jets coach, with 18 double-digit losses. He’s 0-4 in Thursday or Friday games, when the Jets are operating on a short week. He’s 1-6 in prime time and has managed only three AFC East wins in three years — and zero on the road. He’s 3-14 in games played in December and January. The Jets lost 30-0 to the Dolphins on Dec. 17 and nearly blew a 27-7 lead last week in a 30-28 win over the 4-11 Commanders. They were outclassed by a Browns team on its fourth quarterback, without its top wide receiver (Cooper), running back (Nick Chubb), top three offensive tackles, kicker, punter and a handful of key defensive players.
Yet the Browns are 11-5 and Thursday night, they celebrated a return to the playoffs as Jets players exited the field, resigned to another early offseason.
“I’m confident that my turn is coming, that our turn is coming,” said Wilson, who surpassed the 1,000-yard receiving mark for the second straight season Thursday. “I’m going to grind to make sure that happens. Winning in this league is precious and because of that I gotta be on my details, this offseason gotta be the hardest I run in my life. I just want to make it possible for us. You give yourself a chance by working hard, give yourself a chance by going about things right during the week and preparing. Then you gotta go out there and do it on Sunday.”
This organization hasn’t had that playoff feeling in 13 years, the longest drought in the four major professional sports leagues.
Somehow, the Jets don’t feel any closer.
(Top photo: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
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