Saleh Era: Best Win, Worst Loss, Best Moment, Worst Moment, Classic Saleh Game

[Theodore]

Thought it would be interesting to reflect on this. I had so much hope and optimism for Coach Saleh given his demeanor and background at San Francisco. I thought he’d be the perfect “CEO” head coach hire, but he never really seemed to grow into the role. It was an era hallmarked by penalties, slow starts, lots of blow outs, awful on extended rest, and overall just a lot of bad Sundays and Mondays. 
 

Best Win: Has to be the Eagles game last year, and I believe he had both DJ Reed and Sauce Gardner out that day. His biggest accomplishment as NYJ head coach was being the first Jets coach to defeat the Philadelphia Eagles and finally get that monkey off our backs. A close second would be the Bills winner home in 2022.

Worst loss: A lot of people will go with Denver last week, but some recency bias (although a horrible loss). I think I will go with the first Patriots loss in 2022. The Jets were coming off 4 straight wins and the Pats were not that good. The Jets had absolutely no business losing that game.

Best Moment: I’d say the 17 point win in Green Bay. That was three straight wins and got the Jets to 4-2. That moment was probably the high for the Saleh era. The following week the Jets won a close game in Denver, but Breece and AVT went down which really derailed the season. 
 

Worst Moment: So many to choose from. I think I’d go with the MNF game last year against the Chargers. That was a brutal game to sit through as the Jets offense made an awful Chargers defense look like the 2000 Ravens. 
 

Classic Saleh game: The Seahawks game in 2022. It had everything; coming out flat on extended rest, uninspired play, No offense, and penalties galore. 
 

Keep in mind Saleh was 20-36 but 19 of his 36 losses were by 13+ points. Conversely only five wins of 13+ or more. He won a lot of flukey/close games that easily could have been losses.

 

[Biggs]

The win against Washington last year might have been the biggest win for the Commies since 1917.

[TuscanyTile2]

Imo, the best Saleh win was beating the Patriots in a completely meaningless game, while running Breece Hall into the ground (only for the team statistician to screw up and leave him 7 yards short of 1,000) followed by Saleh crowing about how the team was "1-0 in 2024" and that we should "enjoy this win all offseason".

There couldn't have been a more classic Saleh game than that one!

[southparkcpa]

1 minute ago, TuscanyTile2 said:

Imo, the best Saleh win was beating the Patriots in a completely meaningless game, while running Breece Hall into the ground, only for the team statistician to screw up and leave him 7 yards short of 1,000.  Followed up by Saleh crowing about how we should enjoy this win all offseason and how the team was undefeated in 2024.

There couldn't have been a more classic Saleh game than that one!

He really hasn’t had any big wins.   Opening night 2923 against Bills???? He’s blown so many games with poor decisions.  I won’t miss him.  

[Theodore]

6 minutes ago, TuscanyTile2 said:

Imo, the best Saleh win was beating the Patriots in a completely meaningless game, while running Breece Hall into the ground (only for the team statistician to screw up and leave him 7 yards short of 1,000) followed by Saleh crowing about how the team was "1-0 in 2024" and that we should "enjoy this win all offseason".

There couldn't have been a more classic Saleh game than that one!

Good point. I don’t want to sound like Mike Francesa, but he was very immature. I remember his first year (I think it was his first team) when he defended himself by saying he took over an expansion team as a definite red flag. There was also that story last year where he was googling coaches records who lost their starting QBs. The dude just seemed off from the beginning. 

[TuscanyTile2]

8 minutes ago, Theodore said:

Good point. I don’t want to sound like Mike Francesa, but he was very immature. I remember his first year (I think it was his first team) when he defended himself by saying he took over an expansion team as a definite red flag. There was also that story last year where he was googling coaches records who lost their starting QBs. The dude just seemed off from the beginning. 

Good points you brought up.  He was so full of hot air.  That line about how we embarrassed opposing QBs was very revealing, imo.  He treated the job as if he thought he was the "HC of the defense".   Just a complete and utter fraud.  One of the worst HCs in Jets' history, and that's really saying a lot.

Thank goodness he didn't trick Woody into giving him an extension.

[The Crusher]

Very little good, mostly bad and pretty ugly, 

[Matt39]

He should have been fired along with Douglas after they collapsed in 2022.  

[jetswin]

Excellent thread idea...

I can't come up with a single defining moment or big win. My memories of Saleh's tenure will be of feeling miserable on Sundays. I really wanted this guy to succeed.

"We're on to Ulbrich "

[TuscanyTile2]

2 minutes ago, jetswin said:

Excellent thread idea...

I can't come up with a single defining moment or big win. My memories of Saleh's tenure will be of feeling miserable on Sundays. I really wanted this guy to succeed.

"We're on to Ulbrich "

We all wanted Saleh to succeed because we all wanted the Jets to succeed. 

Tbh, though, I'm very happy the way this has worked out so far because I do think this team has enough talent to make the playoffs but I didn't want Saleh (who I think is a terrible HC) to get an extension as a result of that.  Hopefully Ulbrich will prove to be much better than Saleh when it comes to making the jump to the big chair.

[fastmover]

Great question! It made me realize that I don’t have a memorable win, or loss with this team, and this is the first jets team that I don’t…. 
for me, it’s been one long head scratching WTF moment with Saleh’s  teams. I guess I never really bought into his coaching style, or truly believed in him. There were too many micro negative problems and not enough macro positive results from him. 
At least something like Ulbrich, in the beginning of this current team and staff, the defense was sucking ass, Unrich took responsibility for it and said he’ll fix it, and he has, there’s been no problem solving results like that from Saleh.  Good riddance!

 

Semper Fi