After dozens of reports, press conferences, and carefully crafted statements, we still don’t know exactly why (or even how) the Jets abruptly fired head coach Robert Saleh on Tuesday morning. There are plenty of conspiracy theories out there, which should elate the man at the center of most of them. But team owner Woody Johnson’s version of events is that Johnson chatted with Aaron Rodgers on the eve of Saleh’s axing, but that the 40-year-old was not made aware of the move at the time, nor did he request it himself. No matter what the motivation for the firing actually was, though—perhaps Saleh was planning to move on from Rodgers’s hand-picked offensive coordinator, Nathaniel Hackett—the decision was either directly or indirectly influenced by the Jets quarterback.
“This is one of the most talented teams that has ever been assembled by the New York Jets,” Johnson said on Tuesday’s conference call with reporters. “I wanted to give this team the most opportunity to win this season. I feel that we had to go in a different direction and that’s why I did that today. The change we made, I made, I believe will bring new energy and positivity that will lead to more wins starting now.”
The belief that this is one of the most talented teams in franchise history, and that this is a team that should be performing better than its 2-3 record, is largely centered on Rodgers’s presumed status as one of the top quarterbacks in the NFL. The Jets have had a championship-level defense in place for the past few seasons. The running game, when led by Breece Hall, has been solid in the past. And a top passing game was seen as the piece that would put the team over the top. So Rodgers was acquired via trade in the spring of 2023. But after his first season in New York ended just four snaps in (due to a torn Achilles), the front office went even further, stretching the little cap space it had to upgrade key components of the passing game. The team signed three veteran offensive linemen in free agency and drafted tackle Olu Fashanu with the 11th pick in April to bolster the pass protection. The Jets also gave Mike Williams a one-year, $10 million deal to slot in behind Garrett Wilson as the team’s WR2. If you ignored the age and injury history of the additions, this looked like an offense that could keep pace with what had been one of the league’s best defenses over the past few seasons—as long as Rodgers rediscovered the form that helped him win back-to-back MVP awards in 2020 and 2021.
That obviously hasn’t happened. Rodgers ranks in the bottom 10 in just about every useful measure of passing efficiency so far this season, and the 2024 Jets offense doesn’t look any better than its crappy predecessors.
Jets Offensive Efficiency by Season
Objectively speaking, the offense stinks. The defense, though, has been very good, which makes the decision to move on from Saleh—a defensive-minded coach—a head-scratcher. Johnson’s solution to the team’s problems was a like-for-like swap, replacing Saleh with defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich, who Johnson said will bring a “new energy and positivity” to the locker room. But that doesn’t answer a question that many, including some inside the Jets locker room, were left asking after Tuesday’s surprising news: How does this fix the offense?
The solution obviously won’t come from a coaching change. With Saleh out, it appears that Hackett’s job as offensive coordinator is safe—which won’t inspire a lot of confidence in New York. Hackett’s offense was a disaster in Denver during his time coaching the Broncos, and even when he did his best work as an OC in Green Bay, Packers head coach Matt LaFleur was the one calling the plays. If the fix isn’t coming from Hackett, it could come in the way of new personnel, with the trade deadline looming and rumors swirling about a potential deal for Rodgers’s old friend, Davante Adams. But is one player alone enough to save this offense—and salvage the Jets’ failing Aaron Rodgers experiment?
It’s difficult to pick a place to start when diagnosing this offense’s issues, because it isn’t performing well in any statistical categories. The Jets rank 24th in the league in total expected points added and 25th in actual points scored. They’re 29th in EPA per run and 22nd in EPA per pass. New York’s offense averages 4.5 yards per play, which ranks 27th, and only three teams have a lower explosive play rate, according to TruMedia. In other words, this team can’t run. It can’t pass. It’s not efficient moving the ball from down to down, and it can’t generate explosive plays. So, uh, let’s just start where every offensive possession starts: first down.
New York has an ineffective run game. Hall, who was viewed as an emerging star at running back coming into this season, has gotten off to a dreadful start. He’s run for a total of 197 yards on 65 carries, or 3.0 yards per run, tied for the lowest mark in the league. The Jets are running a literal “3 yards and a cloud of dust” offense, but since they play their home games at MetLife Stadium, “3 yards and a cloud of used tire pellets” might be more accurate. That inefficiency isn’t all Hall’s fault. According to Next Gen Stats’ “rushing yards over expected” metric, Hall is rushing for as many yards as expected when accounting for the blocking he’s getting and the defensive fronts he’s playing against. His average RYOE is exactly zero, according to NFL Pro.
I’d put the blame for New York’s running game issues squarely on the design of the offense. The Jets just don’t do very much in the running game outside of standard zone-blocking schemes. Part of the reason for that is that Rodgers prefers to use shotgun formations, and if you don’t have an option threat at quarterback, there’s not much you can scheme up in shotgun apart from straight-ahead blocking concepts. Plus, the back’s alignment in that formation is a tell for which way the run is headed—if they’re aligned to the right, the run is almost always designed to attack the left side, and vice versa—so it can be easier for defenses to game-plan against. Even when the Jets go under center to run the ball, though, the results haven’t been much better. That’s where Hackett’s deficiencies as a play caller are most apparent. Defenses have been all over New York’s run calls since the start of the season.
This is just one example, but it represents what we’ve seen throughout the early part of the season. Watch 49ers linebacker De’Vondre Campbell, who saw Hackett’s offense every day in practice when they were both in Green Bay a few years ago, alert his teammates to the outside run before the ball is snapped.
Here, watch Fred Warner point out the Jets’ pre-snap motion before it happens on multiple occasions.
That lack of deception has carried over to the passing game, where the Jets have been one of the least effective play-action teams in the NFL. According to TruMedia, New York has generated just one explosive gain off play-action, and it’s averaging just 3.1 yards per play on those snaps. Only the Browns have been worse. Here’s a clip from that same 49ers game. Look at how easily San Francisco defenders dismiss Rodgers’s play fake and then plaster all of his options downfield.
The Jets are falling behind the chains at an alarming rate, and Rodgers has been unable to get the offense back on track on second down. But that hasn’t stopped him from trying. New York has the seventh-highest pass rate on second down but ranks just 25th in success rate, according to TruMedia. Rodgers ranks 28th in yards per dropback on second-and-long, which means a lot of those failed first-down plays are eventually leading to difficult situations on third down. Only three teams have logged more dropbacks on third-and-long: the Texans, the Browns, and the Giants. Surprisingly, those difficult situations are where Rodgers and the Jets offense have been at their best. While the league overall is averaging negative-0.10 EPA per dropback on third-and-long with a 31.8 percent success rate, Rodgers alone is averaging 0.16 EPA per dropback with a 38.2 percent success rate, according to TruMedia.
Rodgers has done well in obvious passing situations, but he has run into trouble when opposing defenses get aggressive. The veteran quarterback should be well-equipped to handle the blitz, but he’s been far worse this season when defenses have sent extra pass rushers.
Rodgers Has Been Worse When Blitzed
Defenses seem to be catching on to that trend. The Broncos blitzed Rodgers 22 times in their Week 4 win over the Jets, and the Vikings appeared to have watched that tape before their Week 5 win over New York in London. Not that Minnesota defensive coordinator Brian Flores needs outside influence to send the house after a quarterback, but he borrowed at least one blitz concept from Denver and used it three times against Rodgers on Sunday. The first resulted in Andrew Van Ginkel’s pick-six:
The second ended in an unblocked sack for Harrison Smith:
And Smith was also unblocked on the third snap, though Rodgers was able to beat him with a quick throw to the outside:
The Jets never changed up their protection call on those plays, and Smith was given multiple clear paths to Rodgers. It was on the quarterback to figure out a way to beat the defense after the snap.
Only a few quarterbacks are capable of carrying an offense in that manner, and Rodgers hasn’t been one of those guys for a few years now. He needs more support—like the schematic support he received from LaFleur’s offense in Green Bay, whether or not Rodgers always appreciated it—and his current offensive infrastructure, led by his buddy Hackett, isn’t providing it.
Neither is Rodgers’s supporting cast at the moment. The offensive line has received most of the blame for the passing game issues, but the numbers suggest the pass protection has been mediocre at worst. New York ranks just below league average in a composite ranking of Pro Football Focus’s pass blocking grades, Sports Info Solutions’ blown block rate, and ESPN’s pass block win rate.
Rodgers is taking a lot of hits, but as we’ve seen in the clips above, poorly designed protection calls are the main reason.
Rodgers’s lack of chemistry with his receiving corps is a far bigger issue right now. Per TruMedia, Rodgers leads the NFL with 22 incompletions that have been caused by a miscommunication or receiver error. The next-closest quarterbacks are at 16 apiece, so there’s a healthy gap between Rodgers and the rest of the NFL. Wilson has been the target of eight of those mix-ups. There were high hopes for the Rodgers-Wilson connection coming into this season, but the Vikings loss made it clear that these two have a long way to go before they can develop the kind of rapport that Rodgers and Adams had in Green Bay.
As things currently stand, Allen Lazard has been the lone receiver Rodgers can trust to be in the right place at the right time. That’s led to some pretty touchdown passes, but, you know, it’s Allen Lazard—he leads the NFL with six dropped passes. You can’t build a good passing game around that.
But with Adams demanding a trade from the Raiders last week, the possibility that Rodgers and Adams could be reunited feels more real than ever. And, as dire as the offensive situation seems to be in New York, it’s not outlandish to think that acquiring the All-Pro receiver could fix a lot of the team’s problems—at least in the passing game. As talented as Wilson is, he hasn’t quite developed into a true no. 1 receiver. He’s not someone who makes opposing defenses alter their typical game plan. He doesn’t command safety help over the top when he lines up outside, nor does he require a double-team when he lines up inside, as Justin Jefferson (respectfully) pointed out earlier in the season.
But Adams is one of those receivers. So beyond giving Rodgers a good receiver he could trust, adding Adams would give the Jets a chess piece that would put constraints on a defense. Blitzing is more difficult when there’s a big-play threat on the outside. Playing single-high safety is also harder, meaning opposing units would need to deploy extra help in the secondary and therefore have lighter run boxes up front. And how the defense lines up against Adams would give Rodgers more clues as to what it is going to do after the snap, which would make his job far easier. There’s no guarantee that Adams would fix the Jets offense overnight, but having him in the fold would certainly make the whole group harder to defend.
Without that, though, New York is running out of cards to play. Saleh’s firing could give the locker room a much-needed energy boost after a rough start to the season, but it won’t fix the offense. Everything we know about Hackett suggests that he isn’t capable of solving these problems, either. But with the Jets sitting just a game back in the AFC East, it makes sense to try something, even if it requires the front office to take out yet another mortgage on the future of the franchise. Building the team around Rodgers’s preferences hasn’t worked so far, but at this point, continuing to do so may be their only hope of saving face and salvaging what’s left of this failed experiment.
