ESPN’s Tedy Bruschi crushes Woody Johnson’s ‘knee-jerk’ Robert Saleh firing: ‘Same Old Jets’
NY Post
A former Patriots star lit into Jets owner Woody Johnson for firing Robert Saleh five weeks into the 2024 NFL season.
Tedy Bruschi, a three-time Super Bowl champion and an NFL analyst for ESPN, said on “Sunday NFL Countdown” that Saleh didn’t deserve to lose his job and placed blame on Johnson for how the Jets are perceived.
“Aaron [Rodgers] said, ‘We win, we’re great. We lose, we’re the Same Old Jets.’ Well decisions like this by the owner make you the Same Old Jets,” Bruschi said. “[Saleh] isn’t a bad coach. He’s a coach I believe that was learning on the job. He was a coach that dealt with a young quarterback in Zach Wilson, got them through that, and then Aaron Rodgers popping his Achilles, getting them through that, and now this week, getting fired.
“In my opinion, I think this was a knee-jerk reaction. I don’t think he should’ve been [fired.] … He was trying to do head coaching things. He wanted to demote Nathaniel Hackett, take the play-calling away, which is ironically exactly what Aaron Rodgers was asking him to do, provide accountability. Remember the cadence quote, and then maybe you have to make somebody be accountable? Well let’s make the offensive coordinator be accountable.”
Bruschi was referring to when Saleh said after the Jets’ Week 4 loss to the Broncos that the team had to figure out if they were “good enough or ready to handle all the cadence” after a slew of pre-snap penalties, which some took as the coach wanting to potentially switch the cadence approach.
“That’s one way to do it,” Rodgers said that day after Saleh spoke. “The other way is to hold them accountable.”
The first day of the rest of Daniel Jones’ dwindling time with the Giants arrived Wednesday, with Jones in the building, in the meetings, on the practice field (although not doing very much) and not at all part of the game plan for the next game, relegated to a non-participant role for the remainder of the season.