Ranking the Head Coaching Candidates

Edition #779

☀️ Good morning! ☕

By my count the Jets have requested 14 interviews with head coaching candidates, and you can probably add Jeff Ulbrich to that list making it 15.

The Jets interim Head Coach confirmed that he expected to be interviewed at some point, but as of writing this there was no confirmation that was happening.

Everyone will have their own thoughts on who should lead this team into the future, today I’m going to give you my personal preferences through a tiering process.

As far as we’re aware, only five interviews have taken place so far (Ron Rivera, Mike Vrabel, Rex Ryan, Matt Nagy and Aaron Glenn), so there is 10 to go.

• Aaron Glenn interviewed with the Jets yesterday and then hours later declined an interview with the New England Patriots, I thought I couldn’t like him any more, but here we are.

• Steve Spagnuolo will be interviewing for the position later today. He has three interviews set for today.

• Former Jets coach Robert Saleh completed an interview with the San Francisco 49ers for their vacant DC position yesterday. He would be an incredible choice for them at that position, but I’m sure he’ll want to see if he can land another HC job first.

• The Jets completed a GM interview with Rams senior personnel executive Ray Farmer yesterday. We haven’t profiled Ray yet, but I’ll get to that next week as long as we don’t make a hire before then.

• Today’s quote come’s from soon to be free agent TE Tyler Conklin, who was talking to the official website about his overall game

"I pride myself on being an all-round tight end," he said. "I feel like I bring some things to the table that not a lot of guys bring to the table when it comes to being able to play all three downs. And I do feel like there's some meat on the bone and some things I could have done better.

"I feel like everybody leaves the season kind of thinking that. And I think some of that is just the way things kind of went as a team sometimes. I don't think anybody had the individual seasons that they, you know, were hoping for or wishing for, or knew they could do. Just the way things played out as a team. So I think I played some good ball, and I think I put some good things on tape, but I definitely think I got some better football than me."

I was trying to think of the correct tiers for this piece today, and in the end I’ve settled on some generic ones that reflect what my reaction would be if we went in that direction. Some of these candidates were very close to one another, but for me there are a handful of clear cut favourites.

I’ve left off anyone who has not been invited for an interview, so you won’t see the likes of Ben Johnson and Matt Campbell on the list below.

Horrified

Ron Rivera
Rex Ryan
Jeff Ulbrich