At a time when many were bracing for news that the Jets would be trading for receiver Davante Adams, the Jets instead fired coach Robert Saleh.
The potential for an Adams trade still lingers.
It’s impossible to assess the termination of Saleh without considering the possible Adams trade. Was Saleh against the move? If he was, that could have been enough to drive a permanent wedge.
Saleh has had to deal with the constant pandering to Aaron Rodgers. From hiring his hand-picked offensive coordinator to adding multiple former teammates to potentially trading for Adams, the Jets have given Rodgers everything he wants. And Rodgers has therefore been above the team, doing whatever he wants whenever he wants however he wants.
That was the biggest problem with Rodgers ditching the mandatory minicamp for a trip to Egypt that he has his entire post-football career to take. It wasn’t about whether the mandatory minicamp days were essentially OTA days. It wasn’t about whether he had attended most of the OTAs. It wasn’t about whether he misjudged the intersection on the calendar between the offseason program and his vacation time.
It was about whether he does or doesn’t defer to the man in charge. It’s about whether the rest of the locker room views Saleh as the undisputed leader of the team. It was about whether Rodgers was officially in charge, and whether Rodgers was unofficially in charge.
If Rodgers more recently had been using his sway over ownership to push Adams on the team and if Saleh didn’t want Adams, that’s reason enough for things to come to a head.
