Yes, it’s not easy to tiptoe around a delicate genius.
Three days after Jets coach Robert Saleh attributed five false starts to problems with the unique cadence used by quarterback Aaron Rodgers, and two days after Saleh attempted to shift the focus from “cadence” to “operation,” Saleh rejected any attempt to portray his choice of words as an issue between himself and his quarterback.
“There is no cadence problem,” Saleh told reporters on Wednesday in response to a question about the cadence problem. “There was never a cadence problem. It was created.”
It was made. And that’s not just a random existential observation. Saleh made it. Saleh used the word. Saleh did not attribute five false starts to mechanics or coincidence or anything other than “cadence.”
But Saleh has a reason to distort reality. He doesn’t want to end up on ‘the island’. That’s the place, as explained in Ian O’Connor’s biography of Rodgers, where excommunicated friends and family members go when they say or do the wrong thing at the wrong time, making Rodgers feel wrong.
Look, we don’t blame Saleh for doing what he did. The organization sold its soul to the delicate genius a year ago, and the situation necessarily got worse when he spontaneously forfeited more than $30 million in wages.
Woody Johnson owns the Jets. Aaron Rodgers currently leads the team. And anyone paid by Woody must be willing to pay allegiance to Rodgers. That’s all Saleh did on Monday, and again on Wednesday.
