CANTON, Ohio — Now what?
That is the phrase that has been circulating among the Jets during the first two weeks of training camp.
It is the slogan head coach Robert Saleh came up with to summarize how he wants his players to approach the lofty expectations people have placed on them with Aaron Rodgers at quarterback.
“We do have a good football team,” Saleh told The Post this week. “We do have good character in the locker room. We do have great individual pieces. We have all these aspirations to go win a Super Bowl. Well, now what? What are you doing when you walk into the building? Let’s get back to the moment. Let’s get back to where our feet are.”
Coaches have been wearing T-shirts that read “Now What” at practice and players have begun to parrot the line that Saleh delivered in his opening meeting of training camp.
Saleh is an effective communicator and he may have a future in marketing once his coaching career is finished.
Saleh is great at boiling his messages down to memorable phrases. “All Gas, No Brakes” continues to be his main mantra.
But he needed something else entering this very different season.
In Saleh’s first two years with the Jets, outside expectations were low.
That all changed in April when the Jets traded for Rodgers.
Now, the Jets are mentioned as Super Bowl contenders, but Saleh wanted to make sure his players did not look too far down the road.
When the Jets take the field Thursday night for their 2023 preseason opener against the Browns in the Hall of Fame Game, Saleh will be asking the players, “Now what?”
“You finish [medical] rehab, now what?” Saleh said. “You finish in the weight room, now what? You finish a rep, you made a play, now what? Nobody cares. Let’s keep it moving. Let’s keep it going. Expectations are awesome, but unless we’re focusing on the moment and always trying to take that next step, then none of it matters.”
Veteran linebacker C.J. Mosley applied the phrase when speaking about what the next step is for the Jets defense.
“I feel like our defense is really clicking,” Mosley said. “This is Year 3 of all of us, the core group, being together as far as coaches and players. We understand each other more, the lingo of the defense. We understand how we’re being attacked no matter what type of offense we face.
“Coach’s message is, ‘Now what?’ It’s Year 3, you understand the defense, now what? How can we take it to that next level?”
Saleh borrows lessons from a variety of places.
He loves studying the Navy SEALs and he collects anecdotes that he delivers to his team.
In this case, though, he said he thought of the phrase himself as he pondered what his primary message to start training camp would be.
“All of us are trying to stay true to who we are as an organization,” Saleh said. “We say the same things over and over again. It’s how do you word it in a particular moment. I just felt it was necessary. You can either run from expectations or you can embrace expectations. I’ve never believed in not addressing the elephant in the room. The elephant in the room is well, you’re supposed to win a lot of football games. All right, fine, we’ll take it. Thank you. Now what? Who cares what the expectations are? You can’t control expectations, but you can control your day-to-day operation.”
While some might think the Jets are talking Super Bowl too much for a team that has not had a winning record since 2015, Saleh does not want his team running away from the idea that it is going to win a lot of football games.
“We just have all these expectations, right? There’s a lot of hype around this team. The challenge to the group is embrace it,” Saleh said. “Embrace all this stuff. It’s awesome. It’s a hell of a lot better than the alternative, where everyone is expecting you to lose and they’re all checking the schedule and saying, ‘We’ve got the Jets here. It’s a ‘W.’ ”
