FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — Sauce Gardner normally sits next to Quinnen Williams at team meetings on Wednesdays (or Thursdays before a Monday night game). When Jeff Ulbrich would come into the room, he’d dap up Gardner, and Williams, and the other players sitting by them, then he’d find a spot to sit down on the stairs next to them.
On Thursday, Ulbrich dapped up Gardner and Williams again. Only this time he didn’t sit down on the stairs; instead he descended down them to the front of the room and stood before the entire roster and coaching staff.
He addressed the New York Jets as its head coach. When they went out onto the practice field and stretched before practice, Ulbrich went around and shook every player’s hand. For some, like safety Tony Adams, he had a special handshake. Ulbrich’s goal is to get to know the team’s offensive players just as well now that he’s overseeing the entire operation.
“We were joking with him a little bit,” Gardner said. “We were like: You’re coming in acting different, just trolling him. But he’s the same person … He’s not showing any signs of change, of acting different. He’s showing the love he has for the game, the love he has for the players. I was just talking to him today before practice and I was telling him: The way you’ve been taking this on, you’re inspiring me. You’re motivating me.”
Coach Ulbrich on how involved he’ll be in the offense on Monday: pic.twitter.com/xiVjRgYNPv
— New York Jets (@nyjets) October 10, 2024
When the team huddled up before the official start of practice, it was broken by a count of three, and everyone shouting in unison: “Work!”.
Near the end of a wild week, when Robert Saleh was fired and Nathaniel Hackett was demoted, Ulbrich wanted it to just be another day. Another day of work. The season doesn’t stop because they’ve been through a lot — there are still 12 games to go, starting Monday night against the Buffalo Bills. So now the Jets turn the page with a new coach and, they hope, a renewed energy and purpose to turn things around after a 2-3 start and back-to-back losses.
“We’re moving on to the Bills,” Ulbrich said. “It is time. It is time we get this thing going, start playing the brand of football we know we are capable of, so the entirety of our focus is now on the Buffalo Bills.”
The word of the day was “work.” The word of the week: “Accountability.” Ulbrich preached the need for more accountability, among coaches and players, both in his initial press conference on Tuesday and again on Thursday. Aaron Rodgers said it on “The Pat McAfee Show” on Wednesday and again in the locker room on Thursday. Same for cornerback Sauce Gardner, and wide receiver Garrett Wilson, and others that spoke earlier in the week after Saleh’s firing. Linebacker Quincy Williams was the one who started that conversation with some fiery postgame comments in London after the loss to the Minnesota Vikings.
The accountability started when Saleh was fired, an eye-opening move for owner Woody Johnson to make just five games into a season where the Jets are a win away from first place in the AFC East, and for a team that is a Rodgers pick-six and a Greg Zuerlein 50-yard field goal away from being 3-2, or even 4-1.
But the Jets continued to have the same issues dating back to last season — slow starts, penalties, drops, turnovers and questionable decision-making — and so Johnson wanted to make a change, from Saleh to Ulbrich, to light a fire under a team that might need it. That didn’t make it any easier to stomach. Wide receiver Garrett Wilson said he was shocked by the decision. Gardner was still reeling from it on Thursday.
“The reality is, we’re 2-3, everything is still in front of us,” Gardner said. “So I was really shocked. Coach Saleh and I were really extremely close since the day the Jets drafted me (in 2022). To be honest, he changed my life … So I was shocked because the things that happened — penalties, the offense not doing good, the defense not doing good, special teams not doing good — from the outside looking in, people can say it’s his fault but we are grown men that get paid millions of dollars. We should be able to be held accountable. We should be able to correct ourselves and the mistakes that we make. It threw me off … I still can’t believe it. I came in today and it was just weird.”
Accountability.
On Thursday, Ulbrich announced the unsurprising decision to strip play-calling and game-planning duties from offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett and give them to passing game coordinator Todd Downing. Hackett will keep the same title, but it’s unclear exactly what sort of role he’ll have now, outside of offering support to Rodgers and Downing. At the start of Thursday’s practice, he was catching warm-up balls from Rodgers as Downing stood next to the quarterback.
Rodgers said when he joined the Jets last year that Hackett was one of the main reasons. They are close friends, but the dynamic they had in Green Bay wasn’t working in the form of on-field results this season. The decision to demote Hackett was necessary and understandable; since Hackett took over, the Jets rank 30th in yards per game, 29th in scoring, 30th in rushing yards per game, 31st in third-down conversions and last in red-zone conversions.
Rodgers wouldn’t directly answer a question about whether he felt Hackett’s demotion was necessary, but did say he told Ulbrich he’d back up whatever decision he made about calling plays. His tone was somber and his voice was quiet. He knows that his performance the last two weeks — 55 percent completions, 469 yards, two touchdowns, three interceptions — didn’t help.
“I think we need to do everything we can to maximize this opportunity,” Rodgers said. “The idea of manifestation involves attention and intention, and then a word that goes along with that is accountability. We need to be accountable to each other. When something like this happens, it’s a reset for everybody. When you make a change on the offense it’s a mirror that’s held up for all of us who played, and we all feel terrible about the opportunity that we had that we squandered that led to Robert getting fired and (Hackett) getting demoted. I play better, this doesn’t happen. We play better on offense, this doesn’t happen, so I think it puts a spotlight on us, and now it’s on us to do this. We need to be accountable to each other and we’ve got to raise the level of our play to the standard that we said during training camp.”
Accountability.
“As an offense we’ve gotta go out and do our job to the best of our ability, play good football, whoever is calling the plays we have to bring that stuff to life,” Wilson said. “We met with Coach Downing today, he has great energy, great vibes and it’s our job to go out and make the plays look as good as possible. We haven’t been playing good, detailed football on offense. Everyone has to take accountability.”
Accountability.
This is what Ulbrich wants; it’s been his message in the days since he became head coach. If the Jets are going to turn around their season, it’s going to require players, and coaches, being honest about all the things that have gone wrong, and about what they can do to fix them.
They’ve had two days to process Saleh’s firing, and practices on Thursday, Friday and Saturday to get ready for their next game. A loss to the Bills could be difficult to overcome if the goal is to ultimately make the playoffs (which it is). Johnson wouldn’t have fired Saleh this week if he didn’t want a quick turnaround.
“There’s an unwavering standard,” Ulbrich said. “This is the expectation and you’re either meeting it or you’re not. It’s not an emotional thing, so every human in this building, that’s players and coaches — not just players, players and coaches — are going to be held to that standard.”
Ulbrich will be learning how to be a head coach in the middle of an NFL season, with the pressure to snap a 13-year playoff skid on his shoulders. The world doesn’t care that he’s new to this, and neither will Johnson.
Ulbrich is “a man of integrity,” Gardner said. “The fact that he’s able to lead the whole team now, everyone is going to buy in because we want someone that’s a leader. Coach Saleh was a leader. He can be an example. We’re all extremely confident in ‘Coach Brick.’ This was always a goal of his (to be a head coach) … unfortunately the circumstances were kinda off the way that it happened, but at the end of the day those are the cards he was dealt. Nobody cares about how he became the head coach.
“People want to see us win games,” Gardner continued. “When we have short weeks, people don’t care that we’re tired. They want to see us win. If we don’t win, they’re going to find reasons to complain, find people to point fingers at. That’s just the reality.”
(Top photo: Luke Hales / Getty Images)
