QB Room, Week 5: Aaron Rodgers didn’t fire Robert Saleh … and his offensive coordinator, Nathaniel Hackett, might be next to go

The first logical conclusion on Tuesday was to point the finger at Aaron Rodgers.

New York Jets owner Woody Johnson had just fired head coach Robert Saleh, and the dot-connecting had already been pre-drawn over a series of months. There was Saleh awkwardly using the term “unexcused” to describe Rodgers’ absence during the team’s full-squad minicamp … the curious video of Rodgers pushing Saleh away during an attempted hug and seeming to stare at him in annoyance during a win over the New England Patriots in September … to the week leading into the London game, when Rodgers took exception to Saleh talking about his cadence as a potential issue with false starts. Not to mention the general history of Rodgers, which has featured him having critical opinions about the job performance or decisions of essentially every NFL head coach he’s ever had.

So when the Jets sacked Saleh, the natural presumption was to look for Rodgers’ fingerprints.

At least one disagreement between Aaron Rodgers and Robert Saleh spilled into public view this season. (AP Photo/Adam Hunger)

The only problem? When you talk to people with some insight into how Johnson has absorbed this Jets season, you get the picture of a team owner who has been frustrated and possibly even waiting for an opportunity to pull the rug out from beneath his head coach. I spoke to two league sources on Tuesday who both had insight into Johnson’s thought process, and both painted the picture of a franchise owner who was quietly frustrated with his team’s performance stemming back to Rodgers’ torn Achilles and the 2023 season that was struck down with it. As it turns out, a lot of that frustration was pointed at Saleh, who Johnson essentially inherited after he concluded his ambassadorship and stepped back into full control of the team — and who he apparently found less impressive as a head coach than most of the outside world and also many (or most) people inside Jets headquarters.

With that…

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Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-10-09 13:06:36

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