The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Offseason Interview Series: Jets head coach Robert Saleh

Episode Date: June 16, 2021

New Jets head coach Robert Saleh sits down with Robert Mays for the latest episode of The Athletic’s Offseason Interview Series. They discuss Saleh’s roster collaboration with GM Joe Douglas, the process of assembling a coaching staff and what stood out about Zach Wilson before the draft. Plus, hear what Saleh has to say about the importance of player feedback and how that can translate to success on the field.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. Really excited about today's show. Jets head coach Robert Sala joined us to chat about, well, a lot of things. We talked about the vision he and Joe Douglas had for the roster, how they align that vision, some early impressions of Zach Wilson, how you put together a coaching staff, really enjoyed the conversation with Coach Sala.

I think you guys will as well. We will be here on Friday with me, Nate and Deontay Lee from PFF, breaking down some defensive trends in the NFL, some things that happened last year, some emerging schematic stuff that might impact the 2021 season. Kind of similar to what me and Nate did on the offensive side of the ball a couple weeks ago. Deontay watches defense, understands defense better than I do, certainly,

and better than a lot of people do. So really excited to pick his brain on Friday. That's the cadence we're going to have for the next couple weeks here. A couple shows a week, and then it'll be training camp before. where you know it. So really excited about this one. Hope you guys enjoy the conversation with Coach Sala. And I am thrilled now to be welcome by Jets head coach Robert Sala, one of the people I definitely wanted to talk to when we were putting this together. Coach, I really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you very much for doing this. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

So I was actually having a conversation with another head coach this week. And we were talking about kind of what goes into that job when you eventually get into the chair and figuring out what kind of head coach you want to be. Because it's something I'm sure you spent a lot of time thinking about in other parts of your career. And I'm curious throughout yours, whether it be from Gary Kubiak or Pete Carroll or even Kyle, what would you say the most important lesson you learned from other head coaches was when you plan on how you wanted to be when you finally got that job? You know, when I was very, very fortunate to have had some very, very successful head coaches.

in my life. And, you know, when I was with Pete Carroll, he was integral in terms of building a philosophy and understanding and connecting really with who I am as an individual. And the idea behind it, obviously, is you want to be authentic. You have to be authentic with these men that you go to work with every single day. And they need to understand that and feel that authenticity. And so it started then as a quality control and just really trying to define who I was as an individual and what I wanted to be. So it's kind of been a work in progress. But to be able to just reflect on Gary Kubiak and his demeanor and Pete Carroll and Gus Bradley, Kyle Shanahan, even going back to college with Mark Rick and Brian Kelly and John L. Smith and Bobby Woodb.

All these different personalities. But the common denominator with all of them is that they were. very, very secure in their skin and they were very secure in, uh, in terms of being authentic in their style. And I think players gravitated towards that. It's interesting because Gary and Pete Carroll, I mean, energetic why, in terms of their energy, they probably couldn't be more different if you were to sit and have a conversation with him. So you've seen it on both ends of the spectrum. Oh yeah. No, and well, Gary's energetic. He just, he projects it differently, you know, where Pete is more extroverted in terms of how he displays his energy.

Coach Kubiak very, very, very demanding, very, he's got a lot of, he does a different way. And they both had a lot of success doing it. But the common denominator for both of them is the authenticity and the genuine care for the players. So it's interesting when you were hired, Joe had been on the job for about a year and a half, which is a much different dynamic than what you guys had in San Francisco. Obviously, Kyle and John came in together. They were linked at the hip. So when you're trying to figure out, and he was building a team for a different staff, a different scheme.

So when you guys are figuring out what the vision is and getting on the same page, what is that process like? What were those initial conversations about how you would meld those two things together? You know, there were so many different conversations. And to Joe's credit and his staff, the openness to hear us and our coaches. and vice versa and listening to them and their philosophy. And it wasn't just one conversation. It was conversation after conversation after conversation. And then it didn't end there.

It went into, all right, we're watching a player. And a player has strengths and weaknesses. And what are those weaknesses and one of those strengths and how do they tie into the philosophy of what we're trying to get accomplished? And it's still ongoing. And it's still learning one another. And it's still trying to make sure that we're bringing in not only players who are unbelievable athletes, but reflect the image and the style of play that we're looking for.

You know, and it's the men that we're looking for in terms of how they go about their day-to-day business. And I thought Joe did a wonderful job for a free agency and really matching the philosophy with the athlete. They did an even better job in the draft and matching the philosophy with the athlete. And we just feel very fortunate. We're all to a good start. It's been great so far. It felt like even though he had the previous offseason on the job, they didn't go that far down the road with a certain type of roster. I know you even said this morning that Greg played more too high stuff than you guys do. And there are some changes. But it really was just one draft class and not a lot of free agent spending. So it feels like they weren't set in stone in one

particular way of playing. Do you think that was helpful where they weren't so far down the road with one style of player and one style of roster? Well, you know, the beauty of and give the you know, these scouts and general manager are tremendous amount of credit because there's, you know, they're, they're awesome talent evaluators. And then to mix in and take the effort that they went through to learn what we do defensively, what we do offensively, even with special teams, even though Brandon has been here,

and to relearn a system and what's being asked out of what these players are being asked out of their coaches, that's not easy. It's not easy. and it takes a lot of personal fortitude in terms of the scouts and the general manager to be able to sit down and relearn it and ask the questions that need to be asked to fix your eyes and change what you see is good versus not good or what fits versus good. I shouldn't say good versus not good, but what fits versus what doesn't make it. And it's a lot of credit to them to shove away or move away from that,

I got an attitude, here's your player, here's what you get and I'll make them good. just a collaborative effort that Joe championed. And that's where I think it's just been great since the day we walked in here. How did you establish or communicate those principles? Did you guys have some presentations from the coaching staff to the scouting staff? What was the back and forth between them early on so you guys could get on the same page with that stuff? You know what? It started with, you know, within the first week we're here.

Once we got the staff together, it was to sit down and evaluate the players that were here and how they fit. And we wanted to move where individuals fit. Then we went to free agency. And, or before we went to pre agency, the very next week, we went into a profile tape session where all the different position coaches created profile tapes. And not necessarily to tell scouts, hey, this is what we, this is how you look at a player. It was more, hey, this is what we ask our players to do. This is what we have found in our history to work. And what's great about the two systems we have is we have.

We've got 10 years of football on defense. We got going all the way back to the mid-90s with Papa Shanahan. Sure. And what's the host of just these players who have matched and fit and finding players and what is the common denominator to success within these schemes? And to sit down and show them what we've learned and whether or not we could help. in any way, form or fashion, whatever we could do to help. And for them to ask questions and for us to all get on the same page.

And even when we went into free agency, there was aha moments on both sides where scouts sharing their thoughts about a player versus our thoughts on a player and coaches learning in terms of, you know what, that actually does make sense. That would work. and then going into the draft process and the constant conversations with scout and coach. And it just couldn't have gone better and it's only going to get better with more communication that we have. In the free agent process, is there one player that sticks out that was kind of encapsulated that aha moment that you think is a good example? You know, it's, I'm not going to get in the name. That's totally fine. You know, but when you look at the class in terms of philosophy and player, I can name them all.

But, you know, you look at guys like Corey Davis, and I know they're big money guys, but Carlos, even Jared Davis, who is trying to recapture that first round status and, you know, just refine himself, however you want to define it. But all these guys absolutely love the game of football. They fit schematically. and they aren't just players, but they're professionals. And the way they go about their day-to-day lives, the way they go about their day-to-day business, it embodies what we look for. But they still know how to have fun in the process,

which is what we want to. So it was great to see it all. The puzzle kind of come together here in this first year, and it's going to keep in peace together as we go. I mean, Corey and Carl, I think specifically, you can just see how they fit in the style of offense and defense you want to play. There's not a lot of imagination necessary to understand the roles they play. Their skill sets just fit perfectly into it.

So that aha moment, I'm sure, was pretty evident, pretty clear. So I'm curious with Zach, I mean, obviously, he's a huge part of that point. Do you remember the moment where either was Joe telling you or you guys making a decision together? You're like, all right, that's it. He's the guy. We have landed on this as the decision. You know, there was a, when we first got here, we had, you know, we, we, we, We usually don't start watching draftable guys.

So after free agency, you might contact at guys, but we went quick on, not quick, but we started early on the quarterbacks. So I think we started mid-February. We started going at it in terms of watching the top seven or so quarterbacks. And nobody was allowed to talk to anybody, you know, it's part of the rules. And just show us what. Why is that? Well, you want independent thought.

Sure. And just independent evaluation and then the first time those independent thoughts were shared were together. And there's no wrong answers. You know, you want different, you want different opinions. You want, it's okay if you missed on a guy. There's no wrong answer. I mean, it's all roll of dice anyway. But the idea being that if you're all independent thought and you all come to the same agreement,

then you're probably not going to miss. but if you're all collaborating and talking in terms of, hey, I kind of like this guy and you're swaying opinion and we trick ourselves in the liking a guy that may or may not work, if that makes sense. So it started way back in February, and just the entire evaluation process, we discussed it all,

and it was clear to us that Zach was, I'm not saying head and shoulders of all of them, but he was clearly one of the top two quarterbacks and worth at least the number two big, at the very least. And if not the number one pick, if, in years where, whatever, you get my point. I get where you're going. Yeah.

So he was, you know, for us, the stamp came when, you know, all the medicals came in and all that. You know, Joe, again, the discipline to go through his process, check every box, not just jump on the gun. Like, it could have been very easy for him to take all the calls early. and just forced the issue. But he went through his process. He let the all-season kind of play itself out. And when it came time to pull the trigger, we pulled the trigger. And credit to Joe and his diligence and his patience.

We all think it worked out great for everybody. Is there a trait or personality or physical that you think ultimately sold you that swayed you toward him in the process? You know, when we had our, you know, we were allowed Zoom meetings with the, with all the players. And, you know, we went about, not that it was different, but just in talking football with Zach, his recall, his, his football IQ, his, what he sees, just his questions being asked. Like, that meeting was, to me, was so impressive. I'll put it now from a defensive standpoint on the same level of what we. we felt with Fred Warner when we interviewed him and we felt like Fred Warner was probably the

smartest linebacker interview that I've ever had. Put some in the water there in Provo, I guess. Right. And so then we talked to Zach and I was like, I can't imagine because it, be real, it's a first, that this offseason was the first time I've been in those quarterback meetings. Sure. Interviews of interviewing a draftable prospect. And so I just talked to Greg Knapp, who's been in a million of them.

he's coached Hall of Famers. And I was like, I can't imagine that being any better. Like, you can't get better than that, can you? I mean, there's no way. And that was, in fact, he goes, that was ridiculous. And so that was kind of the moment for us. Coming from a guy that coached Peyton Manning, it's not necessarily a bad standpoint of approval to have.

He's coached some unbelievable quarterbacks. You know, Steve Young, obviously. And so he's not going to wood for him. Matt Ryan, he's coached some very, very, very, very talented quarterbacks. So obviously, the staff you put together is so interesting to me. And just the idea of building a staff in that process is always fascinated me. I remember talking to Frank Reich a couple years ago about trying to find the right balance between people who know and understand your system.

So there's a depth of knowledge, but also diversity of thought, bringing in people from different backgrounds to kind of give you the right mix of stuff. That's important. For you, especially on defense, going through all of your position coaches, I want to say, I think every single guy you have either was on your staff in San Francisco or you would cross pass with at some point and is from what we'll call the Seattle tree for lack of a better term. Was that conscious? And how did you try to think about that depth of knowledge versus a mixture of different backgrounds and thoughts when you were putting that staff together? That's a great question. So for us, you know, the foundation to start at all.

was that Seattle system. And when we got to San Francisco, we branched off. And if you really watch it, it's far from what it was. A lot of cover four, which I was going to ask you about if we have enough time. But a lot of the principles are the same in terms of the way we teach techniques, the foundation behind it all. It's evolved greatly. Now, when you look at Albrecht, he's attached to the foundation.

Mark von Manning understands the foundation. obviously we brought in a couple other guys the foundational teaching aspect of it is what's most important but at the same time to me so to be able to it is very very hard for and not that it can't be done but for coaches when you've had a certain style of coaching your whole life and then you come into our system and you're like well we got to be doing more than this I'm like no you've got to coach it better than what you're coaching it like that's that's the answer the answer is is yeah, there's a balance. The answer is that there's a balance.

But ultimately, the player is the one that's got to make the decisions and play as fast as humanly possible with only 10 seconds to think about it. And how can you help that player get to that point? So with our staff, you know, it was important for us to bring in people who understood where we were coming from and had that foundational piece

and then pull them along in terms of what we've evolved to. And then once they've seen what we've evolved to, seeing what we've pulled and what we've done. All right now from your past experiences of going to Atlanta and learning a few things. Marquan went to Philadelphia and got some things from Schwartz. And Tony Oden has had his history. Ricky Manning from the Lovie Smith history of playing. We've had,

and then we bring in Burke, who's not only doing game management, but he's also part of that Schwartz system. So how do we take what you've done? And can we stretch the evolution of our system just to act more without disrupting? in the essence of what we want our players to accomplish, which is play as fast as humanly possible. And so there was a lot of thought that went into that.

And, you know, there's a lot of people upset with me because, you know, there weren't spots. But, you know, we win enough. People get head jobs and, you know, we'll circle back. That's really, it's really interesting. So you want to make sure you have the bedrock of how you teach it, the principles, and then you can grow from there. And also, the way that you guys grew in San Francisco,

I think that between 18 and 19, that's when Chris Kasurik got there, Joe Woods got there, so people from some different backgrounds. And you guys had sort of a kind of seismic shift in the way you approach the defense from that 18 season to the 19th season. And you had a ton of success, whether it was more quarters or the attacking style on the defensive line. Would you say it's fair that that transition from 18 to 19 is when you really settled into what you wanted to be defensively? that's when the identity of the current version of your defense kind of took full bloom.

Yeah, when we went, so during that season, we've always had a style of play that we played up front. You know, with the under front, sometimes four men, six, you know, playing a six technique, which is the end over a tight end. In studying tape, going through the offseason, you know, I'm a big fan of Schwartz, big fan of Sean McDermann and obviously in our system with Gus Bradley, and all that. So when I went back in 18 and we evaluated everything, it became clear that that wide nine was something that we felt like would work in our system,

especially with the way we have our linebackers playing. And I was like, if we're going to do this, there's one person who was available that was the best in the world in our opinion in terms of coaching it. And he had happened to get fired from Miami because the staff got fired. And it became a bidding war between us at San Francisco. The Jets were trying to add them because he was with him. Oakland, Cleveland. I mean, there was a bunch of teams, Arizona.

And we just had, we had a number two pick. We had Buckner, Armstead. And he was like, ah, this is, you know, like he's a kid in a candy store. I mean. Yeah, there's like there's no way that this team can fail. And it's from a front standpoint. And by putting and bringing in the system and having him coach it, teach it to all of us, and then tying in where he, even for him in discussions evolving and changing some of what he did to match and marry what we do without disrupting.

It's the same thing. Like you have your foundation and for him to evolve his front to match and just the discussions that he and I would have to make that thing work. Like there's an evolution that's happened there. And so just the conversations and being able to evolve and kind of morph this thing to what we do has been really cool to watch over the last two years. And then Aaron Whitecotton came with you from San Francisco. So you'll bring that same principles theoretically. Yeah. And so that's the thing, right?

You are evolving. Even though it's same people from a certain background, there are these little wrinkles every year that you grow and you change and you make you're a little bit harder to predict. And that process is always so interesting to me. You know, it's, you know, the Seattle three system back in the day, you know, all we did was run three, three, three, three, it was every way. And, but the league is, and now I'm, even to this day, I'm, I look back and I'm like, wow, it took them so long to figure out that system. And, you know, at times it's still like, well, you know, it's just the trouble, especially when you can't tee off, like, call them haymakers. you know, there's only so many things you can do to attack it, and they're so clear when you see it happening,

but when you can get it to a point where what I'm trying to say, I guess, is that offenses are too evolved, coordinators are too evolved, and if you run the same thing over and over and over and eventually they're going to punch you in the mouth. And you have to have just enough, you have to have variation to your system, but the balance in coaching to me comes when you have to have enough

to make sure that the coordinator can just call haymakers and that players on offense can play without thinking because they know exactly where you're going to be. But at the same time, you have to have just enough to where the player doesn't fall off a cliff in terms of his ability to play fast. So there's balance there and there's learning your players and there's learning how they respond to coaching

and what they can absorb day in and day out with all the different things that you try to install. And that shift to more cover four on early downs is really interesting. I think that you guys led the league in, I think you were third in the NFL in cover four snaps on first and second down last year, which is a departure from what you used to do. And Staley did a lot of that too. And I'm curious why on early downs more people are going to that.

But we're running out of time. I wanted to ask you one more question, though. I heard Richard Sherman the other day talking about the back and forth you guys would have, whether it was in game or during the week. And obviously you have a longstanding relationship. I'm just wondering, do you have a set process for how you incorporate player feedback? Are there times during the week where you meet? Is it organic?

Like, how do you solicit those ideas and fold them into what you guys do? It's, for one, it's mainly organic. But there's going to be situations where coaches are sitting there at night of the morning just banging their head on the wall in terms of how do we want to fit this concept, for example. And for us, it's always been our philosophy of, all right, card up these three plays, don't show them to the players and just run it and walk through. is used as a walk-through red.

And let's just see what they do. And then from there, we'll bring it in. And let's talk to the players because you usually come in, you get like a 15-minute meeting with the players before you got the practice. And you just say, hey, how do you guys see this?

How do you guys want to play this? And the players usually will tell you what they're feeling and never to us as a coach go against what a player feels. And so a lot of times in those moments of gray area, a player can make it black and white, black and away just by just by going through that process. So as coaches, you have to have the, you have to check your ego to me and,

and allow the player to go out there. Let's just see what they do, you know. And a lot of times the player would be like, they'll kick back like, wait a minute. And then you just have a conversation. And like, well, what do you think, Shirm? And Shirm, well, I think if we said, all right, let's watch these three clips. Let's go back in. Let's watch it.

Let's talk it. And we all get on the same page and now we're rolling. But those covers, those things happen. Like it's a lot of times, you know, you get lost in the amount of things you're telling a player. And you never as a coach want to contradict the player's technique. That's where players go haywire. That's where players call BS.

That's where you lose trust with your player. And so those moments, so it is very organic to us, knowing we coach. But that's a very conscious thing to do is to kind of put the situation right there to make them give you the feedback in real time. So even if it's organic, you know little tricks of the trade to get what you want out of those guys. guys. They're the ones out there taking it in. So they're the ones who are feeling everything that's happening to them. So no one is going to be able to explain it better than they are from an empathy standpoint. And it's, you know, they're, and so why wouldn't you ask? You know, it's, I get it. There's the old saying, I coach, you play shut up. But it doesn't, that doesn't

apply. It's, we're all in this together. Some coaches don't have every answer. Players don't have every answer, but if we work together, we can find the answer. And that's, that's kind of the model we try to try to have. Well, I could do this for a long, long time. I know that you're a busy guy. I sincerely appreciate you taking the time out to do this. I really enjoyed it. Thank you enough, Robert. Awesome. Thanks a lot, coach. We'll talk to you down the road. All right, guys, that's all we got today. Thank you so much to Robert Sala from joining us. I was very excited to get him involved in the offseason interview series that we're doing. please rate and review the podcast on your podcast platform of choice.

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