Luke Braun's Film Room: The Towering Twins Who Felled Robert Saleh
Did the Vikings get a coach fired? Luke Braun explores the game Sauce Gardner and D.J. Reed had against Justin Jefferson and how that holds the key to finding the real reason Robert Saleh was let go.
Justin Jefferson is always happy to win.
But as he approached a podium in the media room at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, decked out in Burberry, he took a different tone. The first (football-related) question asked him to reflect on Minnesota’s stellar defensive performance. Jefferson said they needed a game like that from the defense. He “wasn’t happy with the way the offense played as a whole”.
This game stands in stark contrast to Minnesota’s white-hot 4-0 start, calling their sustainability into question even more. The New York Jets made Sam Darnold look bad enough to make him look familiar to them and unfamiliar to the Vikings fans who just celebrated Darnold winning NFC Offensive Player Of The Week.
Justin Jefferson’s 1.9 average yards of separation, per Next Gen Stats, was the third worst in his career. This finding is replicated by the people at FantasyPoints, who have lost their humanity and can only interact with the world through fantasy football.
They, like Pro Football Focus, chart every play -- including untargeted plays for receivers, unlike NextGenStats. They found that this Jets game was Jefferson’s fourth-worst in terms of separation.
While Jefferson still found his way to 92 passing yards and a few pass interference flags, the Vikings offense was frustrated and left the game feeling saved by the defense.
The New York Jets did what vaunted defensive teams like the San Francisco 49ers and Houston Texans could not. Robert Saleh’s unit flew 3,459 miles and frustrated the greatest wide receiver in the game today. Jefferson has been removed from games in the past, usually through brackets and double teams.
But not so with the Jets.
Even against Justin Jefferson, most games will see late-down situations or blitzes that call for man coverage. The Jets chose Cover 1, pure man coverage, as a cornerstone of their gameplan. New York may have the only two humans in football capable of beating Justin Jefferson one-on-one, and a coaching staff courageous enough to meet that challenge.
Unfortunately, the NFL is a binary business. The Jets lost, the Vikings won, and no other result counts at the end of the day. One of the best defensive performances on the season to date drowned in futility. And somehow, Robert Saleh’s week was going to get worse.
Life’s Too Short For Dreams Deferred
If you’re old enough to remember 9/11, you’re old enough to remember exactly where you were. Most of us gathered around our square TVs, watching in horror as the realization sunk in that this wasn’t an accidental crash. As a second Boeing 767 flew into that tiny frame, the Saleh family recoiled again.
Robert Saleh’s older brother David worked in the South tower. While on a 90-day training program with Morgan Stanley, he saw a fireball emerge from the North tower from his window on the 61st floor. A supervisor told him to stay put — that the danger was in the other tower, not his. David didn’t listen.
Around floor 40, he heard an intercom announcement echoing through the stairwell. The muffled voice tried to tell everyone that things were safe, and that it was okay to return to the office. Many of David’s coworkers headed back up the stairs and resumed the working morning. David kept on going down the stairs.
At floor 24, he felt the building shake. As his family watched live news coverage, he felt the impact of United Airlines Flight 175 slamming into the side of the building. David made it safely to the lobby, and not until calling his family did he learn that what he felt was a commercial airplane.
He couldn’t call his family until around 4 o’clock that afternoon. That meant that his parents, and his younger brother Robert, a 22 year-old credit analyst at Comerica Bank in Detroit, spent most of that day thinking they’d never see him again. When they finally heard from him, the relief was overwhelming. That experience had already changed Robert Saleh’s outlook on life.
David only survived because he acted on instinct. If he had thoughtlessly listened to his boss, he’d have perished alongside his coworkers. If he had turned around on floor 40, he’d have met the same fate. Every decision made all the difference. So many of David’s coworkers died doing something they were completely dispassionate about. They gave their lives to stay on the clock.
Just a few months later, the New England Patriots hoisted their first Lombardi. Watching a relatively unknown Tom Brady take down The Greatest Show On Turf inspired Robert Saleh. He saw the kind of stories that football could tell, and how a grieving nation could unite behind an underdog story.
The former DII tight end couldn’t bear to return to a cubicle. Life is simply too short to waste your time in a dead-end job. He had to get involved with football again. He wasn’t nearly good enough to get a job as a player, but he had the connections to get a graduate assistant gig coaching tight ends at Michigan State.
Every Single Detail Matters
Football is a beautiful game in which small, detailed decisions matter. “A game of inches” is a cliché for a reason. A 2nd and 7 catch that’s marked just short of the line to gain may not feel that weighty, but this one set up a controversial punt on 4th and 1 right before Green Bay started its comeback.
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