NEW YORK JETS HIRE NATHANIEL HACKETT AS NEW OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR, GIVE UPDATE ON ZACH WILSON
The New York Jets have hired former Broncos head coach Nathaniel Hackett as their offensive coordinator, the team confirmed on Thursday.
Hackett previously called plays and worked with Jets head coach Robert Saleh in Buffalo and Jacksonville. He was also widely revered across the league during his tenure as the offensive coordinator under Matt LaFleur in Green Bay with the Packers.
Head Coach Robert Saleh rubbished talks of a previous connection with Hackett helping in this hire. “It’s all surface-level stuff,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what the connections are. Everyone’s got a connection to everybody in this league.”
“The most important thing was finding a guy who we felt could continue developing our young guys at a very high level and a guy who’s done it before,” he went on. “A guy who’s had success in this league with a variety of different quarterbacks… After every interview, I just went back to my list to just kind of review where we stood, and Nathaniel [Hackett] checked every box.”
The Jets have question marks at quarterback and need to make decisions regarding 2021 first-round pick Zach Wilson, fifth-year QB Mike White, veteran Joe Flacco, and former Jacksonville Jaguar Blake Bortles, who has been linked to the Jets in the past few weeks.
Hackett had the no.2 offense in the league with Bortles at quarterback in 2017 in Jacksonville and was the offensive coordinator for the Green Bay Packers when Aaron Rodgers won consecutive MVPs in 2020 and 2021. The team also reached back to back NFC Championship games (2019 and 2020) with Hackett at the helm of their offense. Rodgers may hit the trade block this offseason, and if so, the Jets could be in the conversation to land the Super Bowl XLV MVP, especially now that they have Hackett within the coaching staff.
Head Coach Robert Saleh mentioned on Thursday that the team is “committed to finding a veteran [quarterback]” but didn’t get into names. “We do plan on bringing a veteran quarterback if we can,” Saleh said. “We want to continue working with Zach [Wilson] and continue to develop him.”
With regard to Wilson, Saleh insisted that they still want to develop him and that the organization still has a lot of faith in him. “Like I said, there’s a lot of attention on the veteran,” Saleh said. “But there’s also Zach [Wilson], there’s also the people that are in this building too and we want to continue developing those guys… Zach, we still have a lot of faith in him. He does things with the football and his arm that you can’t teach. He’s still young. He’s still only 23 years old and he’s already got two years under his belt in this league. So we just want to make sure that we give him every opportunity to grow and develop.”
While it’s been reported that Hackett had been the Jets’ top choice for the last week or so, the decision fell on Hackett about whether he wanted to return to coaching so soon. Hackett was fired from the Denver Broncos head coach position in December, a 15-game stint that ended after a 51-14 loss at the hands of the Los Angeles Rams. As per NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, New York Jets head coach Robert Saleh interviewed 15 people before circling back to his first choice in the end.
Hackett’s father, Paul, was the Jets offensive coordinator under Herm Edwards from 2001-04. The Jets let go of offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur at the end of the season after just two years on the job and have now made a speedy replacement.
The Jets also announced Keith Carter as the team’s new offensive line coach and run game coordinator. Carter will work with Hackett as the team continues to search for a senior offensive assistant.
-Maher Abucheri
Twitter: @pabloikonyero
Photo: Atlanta Falcons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.