THE HEAD COACH IS THE SACRIFICIAL LAMB.

"The Jets fired their coach to save their season. Except he wasn't the problem."

The New York Jets, 2-3 through five weeks, could have looked at the glass as half full.

In a 10-9 loss to the Denver Broncos in Week 4, New York missed a potential game-winning field goal late in the fourth quarter. And against the Minnesota Vikings the following week, the Jets were driving for a potential game-winning score until Aaron Rodgers threw an interception, his third of the game, to fall 23-17.

An optimist would say that New York was under .500 but that its last two losses had come by a combined seven points. It was a field goal away from being 3-2. One fewer bad throw away from somehow being 4-1. And despite their 2-3 record, the Jets entered Week 6 only one game behind the Buffalo Bills for the lead in the AFC East.

Instead, New York decided to fire head coach Robert Saleh after the Vikings loss, a glass-half-empty move by a desperate team desperate to salvage a season under massive expectations. And the decision hasn’t worked.

Well, yeah.  Sports pundits can be unsparing.

In the five games since they fired Saleh, the Jets are only 1-4. And their season reached a new low in Week 10, as the Arizona Cardinals dominated them in all three phases of the game for a 31-6 win.

Where has the Jets' season gone wrong? It starts with Rodgers.

Rodgers, 40, who played only four snaps last season before he tore an Achilles tendon, has looked like a shell of the player he used to be. A four-time MVP and Super Bowl champion, Rodgers has been unable to capture his past form in New York.

The Packers were thinking about the succession starting five or six years ago.  The Jets have brought in receivers Randall Cobb and Davante Adams and now placekicker Anders Carlson.

Coaches enjoy a form of tenure.  Mr Saleh has been serving as a consultant to several teams, including advising the offensive coordinator in Green Bay on how opposing defenses might react to Packer formations and tendencies.