Here is a news flash for those who have been asleep for the last year: the 2024 season for the New York Jets was a disaster.
While the season didn’t get off to the hot start that many predicted when Aaron Rodgers returned from his Achilles injury that sidelined him for the 2023 season, things really began to spiral when Woody Johnson fired Robert Saleh five weeks into the year. Johnson promoted then defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich to head coach hoping for a “spark” and instead got a dumpster fire.
I don’t blame Jeff Ulbrich one bit for everything that went wrong under his tenure as the interim head coach of the New York Jets. In fact, I thought he handled an impossible situation with class and dignity and kept the locker room together as much as any other coach put in that position.
Ulbrich had a perfunctory interview for the Jets head coaching job that I wouldn’t even have characterized as an afterthought. Within days of speaking to Woody Johnson and his team of consultants, Ulbrich took the defensive coordinator job in Atlanta, seeing the writing on the wall on his chances as being the Jets head coach (not that I think he should have been the head coach).
In his press conference with the Falcons, Ulbrich was asked about what went wrong for him with the Jets. He was very quick to blame himself as opposed to others for the ruinous season even though I believe the blame squarely on the shoulders of Woody Johnson.
“There is an element of a failure for myself in that way because I didn’t delegate,” Ulbrich said. “I didn’t. I just took it all on myself. In my mind’s eye, I was trying to create continuity and I didn’t want to fracture the staff. I thought the best thing for me to do at that point in time was just try to keep everybody in the same role that they had just so we could keep things rolling. And it wasn’t the right thing to do. It wasn’t as I look back. I should have delegated. I should have given the defensive coordinator responsibilities to someone else.”
Ulbrich tried to be the head coach and the defensive coordinator at the same time with zero time to prepare for that role. There were a thousand things Woody Johnson did wrong during the 2024 season, but taking the leader of the Jets best unit, and stretching him thinner with no plan in place was up there with one of the worst things he did. I don’t believe that he should have fired Saleh when he did. He should have done it in the offseason or rode out the season with him. Firing him five games in was a dumb move, and putting Ulbrich in charge instead of a guy like tight ends coach Ron Middleton was almost as bad. Ulbrich could have been a stabilizing force on the defense and the Jets might have found some way to continue playing at a high level on that side of the ball with Ulbrich still in charge.
Ulbrich identified another area where things fell short with the Jets. He said he learned “the value of truth tellers” on a coaching staff because assistants sometimes think they should be taking things off of the head coach’s plate. Ulbrich said “the lack of truth sometimes was really detrimental”. In other words, open and honest communication, even when difficult, is important in a franchise. There was none of that with the Jets.
Hopefully Aaron Glenn will learn from Ulbrich’s mistakes.
