Here's Robert Saleh Telling the Story of How He Forgot He's the Jets Head Coach Taking You Into the Weekend

The Jets are having their first practices. And credit to their new head coach Robert Saleh for this little anecdote in his meeting with reporters. “I’ll give you a quick, funny story," Saleh said. "We just had our bigs out there and we were going through stuff when the horn blew for practice to be over. I started to take my normal spot behind the huddle to listen to the head coach speak when I was like ‘Oh, shoot. That’s me.’ But no, it’s been good.” 

I wish I could rip on Saleh for this, but I just can't. 

I will say he's not the first Jets head coach to forget he's the head coach. Most of the time Rex Ryan had delusions of grandeur that had him believing he was Football Jesus. Adam Gase's hold on reality was tenuous at best. And for all we know he thought he could fly and turn invisible. Eric Mangenius obviously had fantasies where he was Bill Belichick. And I always believed that guys like Todd Bowles and Herm Edwards tried to convince themselves they had any job in America besides coaching the Jets, just as sort of a Zen-like coping mechanism to help them make it through the day. 

With Saleh, it's more in the category of "honest mistake." Muscle memory from a guy who's strictly been an assistant college and pros since the early 2000s and never had to break down the end of practice before. Not to mention, I think I kind of like the guy. I admire any guy who can take a job with such a terrible history of grinding strong willed men into dust and still deliver a little self-deprecating humor. I heard an interview with John Cleese of Monty Python a while back where he said a friend of his who's a psychologist says the first sign a patient is getting better is when they have the ability to make fun of themselves. And in spite of Saleh's coaching pedigree and how good he's been as a coordinator, based on the history of his new job, he's going to need al the mental health a human being is capable of. 

Still, my advice is to remember what it felt like to forget he's in charge of the Jets. He might need that. A lot. The others I mentioned sure did.