Head Coach Candidate: Darren Rizzi

Edition #781

Good morning!

The Jets continue their search for the leadership team to take them forward, and will meet with more candidates this week including Brian Flores who is largely considered one of the favourites for the position.

Unfortunately the Jets have decided to meet with so many candidates I simply can’t keep up with profiles 😂. Had I known they were going to interview the entire NFL I’d have started these back in October.

One interesting name is New Jersey native Darren Rizzi, who most recently was interim head coach of the New Orleans Saints, leading them to a 3-5 record after Dennis Allen was fired following a 2-7 start to the season. Today we’re going to ask the question: “Should he be in consideration for the Jets job?”.

• Mike McCarthy is out in Dallas. Could the Jets be interested? Perhaps. But more importantly for me, New Orleans are heavily interested. The Saints are one of the teams who have been closely linked with Aaron Glenn. If the Saints take McCarthy that opens up the way for the Jets to hire Glenn and you know I’m all for that.

• Former Jet Sam Darnold struggled in his first play-off start last night as the Vikings crashed out of the playoffs at the first hurdle. Rams defensive coordinator Chris Shula did an outstanding job disguising coverages, bringing pressure from multiple angles and playing more man coverage which Sam struggles with. Darnold was hesitant all night, threw a pick, coughed up a fumble, missed several open targets and held onto the ball far too long taking 9 sacks in the process. Darnold has had a great year but last weeks game against the Lions and last nights game against the Rams have hurt his stock heading into FA considerably. Chris Shula’s stock continues to rise, he’ll be a head coach soon. He’s the son of Dave Shula and grandson of Don Shula, I mean I’m surprised we haven’t interviewed him, I’d much rather interview him than Rex Ryan.

• Here are some key dates for your diary

  • February 1st - Senior Bowl in Mobile Alabama

  • February 18th - Clubs can designate Franchise or Transition Players.

  • February 24th - NFL Scouting Combine starts in Indy

  • March 4th - Deadline for franchise/transition tags to be submitted

  • March 10th - Legal tampering period begins

  • March 12th - NFL free agency begins (new league year starts)

  • April 7th - Jets can start off-season workouts as they’ll have a new HC

  • April 23rd - Deadline for RFA to sign offer sheets

  • April 24th - NFL Draft

• The Jets announced that they’d conduced an interview with interim head coach Jeff Ulbrich for the full-time position. Considering how bad we looked under Jeff Ulbrich, I imagine that was more as a goodwill gesture to him. If he was given the position I imagine the Jets would lose a fair amount of fans ahead of the 25 season.

I didn’t have Darren Rizzi on my shortlist of candidates to preview, but considering his long and successful NFL coaching career, maybe I should have.

You don’t see many special teams coordinators interviewed for head coaching positions, but with them not holding a bias to one side of the ball or the other, maybe we should give them more consideration, especially if they’ve been successful.