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Robert Saleh oversaw a San Francisco 49ers protection that got here inside minutes of profitable the Super Bowl final 12 months and that managed to rank among the many league’s greatest this season regardless of lacking a lot of its high gamers.
But that isn’t why the Jets coveted him.
After one of many worst seasons in franchise historical past, a 2-14 fiasco that uncovered a scarcity of complete oversight and resulted in Adam Gase’s dismissal after two years on the job, the Jets didn’t deal with discovering an offensive mastermind or a defensive wizard after they looked for Gase’s substitute. They needed a frontrunner, an skilled communicator, an lively motivator able to inspiring each the locker room and a fan base that had been rising extra disgruntled by the day.
An intensive course of led the Jets to Saleh, who after twice interviewing with the staff agreed late Thursday night time to grow to be their subsequent head coach, the climax of his 20-year odyssey from a low-level place within the enterprise world to the management of an N.F.L. staff.
Saleh, 41, who’s of Lebanese descent, is believed to be the league’s first Muslim Arab American head coach. He spent 16 seasons as an N.F.L. assistant, the final 4 because the defensive coordinator with San Francisco, the place gamers and fellow coaches alike anticipated him to get a head-coaching job sometime.
“When you’re looking for a head coach who can establish a culture and get the respect of his players and is just a great teacher, that’s Saleh,” the previous N.F.L. linebacker Brock Coyle, who performed two seasons for Saleh in San Francisco, mentioned Friday in a phone interview. “Every time I left a meeting with him, I knew exactly what needed to be done, whether it was in practice or the game.”
The Jets have struggled to determine a lot of something over the previous decade besides dysfunction and despair, profitable the third-fewest video games within the N.F.L. since their final playoff look, within the 2010 season. Saleh supplies a welcomed infusion of dynamism.
With his shaved head and muscular physique, Saleh, a former tight finish at Northern Michigan, cuts a commanding determine, and his demonstrative sideline presence — yelling, fist-pumping, high-fiving — after large defensive performs earned him sustained airtime throughout 49ers broadcasts.
Off the sector, Saleh initiatives a peaceful and picked up demeanor, Coyle mentioned, and within the high-stress world of teaching, that resonated together with his gamers.
“He really put critical thinking into his coaching,” Coyle mentioned. “He’s not this ego-driven guy. He really thought about what’s the best way to relay the message he wanted to his player and always wanted to hear what the players thought. His door was always open.”
After a ragged first two seasons below Saleh’s watch, the 49ers’ protection, fueled by an inflow of expertise, powered the staff to the Super Bowl, which San Francisco misplaced to Kansas City. Impressed, the Browns interviewed him within the final low season, and after studying that Cleveland can be hiring Kevin Stefanski as an alternative, the 49ers’ head coach, Kyle Shanahan, mentioned: “Every year we keep him we’ll be very fortunate. Saleh’s going to be a head coach in this league. He could’ve been one this year. Most likely, he’ll be one next year.”
Several very important members from the 49ers’ 2019 protection, together with Nick Bosa, Richard Sherman and Dee Ford, missed most of this season with accidents, however the staff nonetheless completed fourth in passing yards allowed and fifth in whole yards allowed per recreation.
As Saleh units about assembling a staff to his specs, it’s seemingly that he’ll import gamers and coaches from San Francisco. That group might embody Mike LaFleur — the youthful brother of Packers Coach Matt LaFleur, who was one of the best man at Saleh’s marriage ceremony — because the Jets’ offensive coordinator.
If so, LaFleur would absolutely borrow Shanahan’s run-heavy scheme, loaded with motions and shifts, a call that would affect how the Jets strategy the quarterback place this low season. The incumbent, Sam Darnold, performed in a model of that scheme as a rookie, however the Jets should determine whether or not to proceed constructing round Darnold or to commerce him, filling his spot with a veteran or a first-round choose, maybe Justin Fields of Ohio State or Zach Wilson of Brigham Young.
Saleh grew up in Dearborn, Mich., house to one of many nation’s largest Arab American communities, and after graduating from Northern Michigan in 2001, picked finance over soccer, going to work for Comerica Bank. But a number of months later, when his brother David escaped the South Tower in the course of the terrorist assaults of Sept. 11, Saleh reassessed what he needed from life.
“His love and passion for football is ultimately why he wanted to get into coaching,” David Saleh advised The Detroit News in 2020. “He just didn’t want to leave the game.”
Saleh labored for 3 school applications over the following 4 years earlier than becoming a member of the Houston Texans as a defensive intern in 2005, a transfer that altered the trajectory of his profession. There, he met Shanahan, who would rent him in 2017 because the 49ers defensive coordinator.
Saleh turned the fourth head coach of shade presently within the N.F.L., in keeping with the league’s measures of variety, with 4 openings nonetheless to be crammed. His hiring got here a number of months after the league up to date the Rooney Rule, which goals to extend variety in candidacies for head teaching jobs and sure entrance workplace roles. The rule was modified in May to bump up its interviewing requirement from not less than one exterior minority candidate for every head teaching place to not less than two.
When Jets General Manager Joe Douglas lately delineated his perfect qualities for the following coach, he solely alluded to soccer. He talked about character, integrity and communication expertise. After interviewing 9 candidates, after listening to their plans and their visions and their ambitions, Douglas and the Jets knew what they wanted.
They wanted Robert Saleh.
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