This is a defining moment for Robert Saleh.
A moment-of-truth game.
It is too early to call Patriots-Jets a MUST WIN.
It is a BETTER WIN.
The adversity that strikes every head coach and every team has come much too early for Saleh’s Jets.
This Take Flight season turned ominously into the possibility of a Take Fright season when Aaron Rodgers after four snaps fell to the turf.
The fleeting exhilaration of what felt like a Monday Night Miracle against the Bills turned to a sobering knockout loss to the Cowboys with Zach Wilson inspiring little or no confidence that he will be able to end the Jets’ 12-year playoff drought if the coaches, offensive line and defense fail to aid and assist him.
Saleh vowed afterwards that his Jets would not spiral into one of their nosedives, and now it is on him to make sure it does not.
With Rodgers not out of mind but out of sight, there is an unmistakable leadership void that it is up to the head coach to fill.
And that is why Saleh stood before his team on Wednesday with a reminder that the sky is not falling.
“Even with Aaron here, he’s the head coach,” Connor McGovern told The Post. “As much as we want to be a player-led locker room, Saleh’s that leader of men. He knows which ways to motivate people and when to do what. His message always seems to be right on point. Saleh’s leadership is second to none.
“Everyone got a really good look at ‘Hard Knocks.’ That wasn’t for show. That’s how every team meeting is. I like to call ’em parables because I don’t know a better word for ’em. They always hit the nail on the head, and I think every guy can learn a lot from each one. A lot of ’em are life lessons that you can take on the field but also off the field. Saleh cares about you as a football player and as a person. He’s genuine, he’s humble, and that’s the type of guy that you want to go to battle for, and the type of guy that you follow into any situation.”
Saleh referenced a psychologist named David Rosenthal, whose Pygmalion effect or Rosenthal effect refers to situations where high expectations lead to improved performance, while low expectations lead to poor performance.
“The more positive you are and the more you put in positivity, the more you’re gonna get out,” McGovern said.
“Essentially,” McGovern said, and laughed, “don’t listen to what everyone’s saying, and keep the positivity high.”
Saleh is 0-4 against Bill Belichick and the Jets are somehow 0-14 against him in their last 14 meetings, and this is the time for him and for his Jets to make a stand and end this madness.
The last thing Saleh needs is to lose to an 0-2 Patriots team because he that would open up the possibility of 1-5 with the Chiefs, Broncos on the road and Eagles next.
The last thing Saleh would need is a burgeoning crisis of confidence without Rodgers at his side to guide and control the standard and the culture.
“To have a guy like him,” Saleh said back in the spring, “who embodies all of that, who embodies what you want out of a football player, and who has the track record and who has had success and who has a voice like he has, it makes our job easier because we’re not having to worry about things that we don’t have control over.”
But now he has to worry more about things he doesn’t have control over. Even back as 49ers defensive coordinator, Saleh was saying: “The best coached teams are teams that coach themselves.”
Defensive end Quinton Jefferson: “We’re a player-driven team. He sets the tone but still I think we have a lot of great leaders in this room of guys who carry that load since 8’s gone.”
While there are other leaders in Saleh’s locker room, Rodgers was the pied piper/player-coach.
It was because of Rodgers that Allen Lazard, Randall Cobb and Billy Turner are Jets.
Dalvin Cook wanted to play with Rodgers.
The Jets hiring of OC Nathaniel Hackett was instrumental in luring Rodgers out of retirement and out of Green Bay.
And now Hackett is up to his eyeballs by his lonesome trying to devise a game plan for Wilson … against Belichick, no less.
While Saleh is the CEO that Adam Gase was not, defense is his forte, and his big-talking defense got punched in the mouth early and often by the Cowboys.
Saleh’s defense will have a personnel advantage over Belichick’s offense just as Belichick’s defense will have a personnel advantage over Hackett’s offense, largely because Wilson (2 TDs, 7 INTs, 50.6 passer rating, gasp) has resembled a baby lamb against the GOAT.
It will be imperative for Saleh’s and coordinator Jeff Ulbrich’s defense to get off the field on third down this time so Hackett can at least have opportunities to establish a ground game to protect Wilson from himself and from Belichick.
“One game doesn’t define you,” Jefferson said.
BETTER WIN this one.
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