Aaron Rodgers leads the NY Jets offense. While he doesn’t have the official titles of “offensive coordinator” or “play caller” in his contract, this is Rodgers’ offense.
It’s not Nathaniel Hackett’s offense, and it won’t be Todd Downing’s offense — this is all about Rodgers. This setup could work well if the offense was scoring points, but that hasn’t happened in the first five weeks.
The Jets’ offensive issues led to the team parting ways with former head coach Robert Saleh last week. Saleh realized that changes were needed in the offensive coaching staff during the offseason. Unfortunately, he couldn’t make those changes happen.
The Athletic’s Dianna Russini reported on Saturday that Saleh tried several times to bring in a new offensive coach in the offseason, reaching out to people like Eric Bieniemy, Kliff Kingsbury, Luke Getsy, and Arthur Smith. However, he was unable to recruit any of them.
The reason for this is what many have been speculating for months.
Russini reports that the Jets couldn’t offer any of those coaches an offensive coordinator position, which made the job less appealing. All four coaches ended up getting offensive coordinator jobs with other teams during the offseason.
Why couldn’t the Jets offer them those positions? The answer is Nathaniel Hackett. More specifically, it’s because of Aaron Rodgers.
Rodgers was reportedly involved in the process of hiring a new coach and seemed to understand that changes were necessary, but “he wasn’t going to boot Hackett.” He refused to let the Jets fire or demote Hackett during the offseason.
As a result, the Jets missed the chance to make significant changes to their offensive coaching staff and instead settled for new running backs and wide receivers coaches.
Just five weeks into the season, Saleh has been fired, and the Jets finally demoted Hackett in favor of passing game coordinator Todd Downing, who has his own mixed record as a play-caller in the NFL.
Saleh knew that the offensive coaching staff needed to be revamped in the offseason. Rodgers seemed to agree that changes were needed, but those changes couldn’t happen at the cost of his preferred play-caller.
Rodgers has clearly changed his mind about the situation since Hackett is no longer calling plays for the Jets’ offense, but it’s too late for Saleh, who is now watching from home as his former team competes for first place in the AFC East on Monday.
Maybe Rodgers has become more open to changes in the Jets’ offense. But it might also be too late. Only time will tell.
