New Atlanta Falcons defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich spent 12 games in the big chair for the Jets as interim head coach. He has some regrets about how things went down in New York.
Introduced in Atlanta on Monday, Ulbrich said he "failed" at the "delegation" part of being a head coach, trying to tackle too much of the job himself. Like many Jets defenders in 2024, that led to missed tackles.
"There is an element of a failure for myself in that way because I didn't delegate," Ulbrich said, via The Associated Press. "I didn't. I just took it all on myself. In my mind's eye, I was trying to create continuity and I didn't want a fractious staff.
"I thought the best thing for me to do at that point in time was just try to keep everybody in the same role that they had just so we could keep things rolling. And it wasn't the right thing to do. It wasn't as I look back. I should have delegated. I should have given the defensive coordinator responsibilities to someone else."
Ulbrich took over after New York fired Robert Saleh after five weeks. The Jets defensive coordinator was elevated to interim for the final 12 games. Gang Green went 3-9 under Ulbrich.
Spending time in charge, Ulbrich said his biggest lesson was that head coaches need truth-tellers, not smoke-blowers. He said he felt that how coaches approached him changed after he was elevated to the interim role.
"I learned even more than I knew the value of truth-tellers on your staff," Ulbrich said. "There's certain things that need to be told to the head coach that are occurring because a lot of times what I found in that interim role was, although it was interim, it was like I felt the shift in the way people talked to me and treated me and what they said to me and the lack of truth sometimes was really detrimental, you know?"
That realization underscores the dysfunction that surrounded New York under the previous regime. Gang Green hired former Detroit Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn, in part, to help clean up the mess.
Now, in Atlanta, Ulbrich's lesson could help aid head coach Raheem Morris.
"So it just it reinforced the idea that (Morris) is going to need me in that way, to make sure that I'm always telling the truth and maybe, you know, eliminating some of the blind spots that he doesn't see," Ulbrich said.
Ulbrich will call the defensive plays under Morris but plans for a collaborative effort with the entire staff.
"This is going to be a collaboration on the highest level," Ulbrich said. "It would be criminal of me not to take advantage of these guys, you know, or have some hard conversations."
