Ideal Jets' defensive coordinator candidate has just hit the market

Sometimes you just get lucky. The Giants might be experiencing that soon, with the firing of John Harbaugh. And while New York Jets fans had to endure the misery that was Steve Wilks' 2025 defense, they may be about to experience a little luck of their own.

There are several reasons why the Jets' defense struggled. They weren't exactly loaded with high-end talent coming into the year, despite a small handful of stars. Sauce Gardner underperformed, got hurt, and ultimately got traded. As did Quinnen Williams.

And there's no doubt that the final numbers weren't helped by the last few weeks of the season, where the Jets were clearly tanking — I mean, cough, struggling to compete, cough.

But the direction of Steve Wilks was the original sin of the Jets' defensive hell this year. He was fired a little under a month ago, one of the few things the Jets did right. And now the mass firing of head coaches, which is well underway, may have opened the door for a perfect replacement.

Thank you, Atlanta Falcons

No disrespect to Steve Wilks, who undoubtedly knows more defensive football than I'll ever forget, but bringing him in as Aaron Glenn's first defensive coordinator was always weird. It may have been Glenn's first big mistake.

Before coaching the Jets' defense, Wilks served as an "advisor" for the Charlotte 49ers' football team. That's a far cry from his head coaching days. Talk about far removed.

While he was doing that, one Raheem Morris was head coaching a National Football League team to almost a .500 record. It didn't make for the most remarkable head coaching tenure of all time, but it's the level of professional acumen the Jets' suffering defense needs.

The Atlanta Falcons decided to move on from Morris, who, in his second stint as a full-time head coach, struggled to get over the hump of mediocrity. The roster had talent, specifically on offense, but a pair of 8-9 seasons was enough to do him in.

Just in time for the Jets, who happen to be headquartered about 20 miles from where Morris was born in Newark, New Jersey, and about 12 miles from where he grew up in Irvington, New Jersey, to inquire about his services.

Let's take a walk down memory lane for a bit. Morris didn't make his way to the top during this decade. And he didn't even do it during the last decade.

No, Morris truly burst onto the scene way back in the early 2000s. After stints at Hofstra and Cornell following his college days, he won a Super Bowl ring with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as a defensive quality control coach in 2003.

By 2006, he was their assistant defensive backs coach. By 2009, he was their head coach. While that didn't ultimately work out, he would go on to become the assistant head coach of a Falcons team that came as close as you can to a Super Bowl title without winning it.

And eventually, he would go on to win his second Lombardi trophy with the Los Angeles Rams in 2022, serving as the defensive coordinator of a championship-level unit.

This is an accomplished professional who has been around the block and has brought defenses to the top of the mountain on multiple occasions. This is a guy with a proven and recent track record of success.

The Falcons, while disappointing, weren't some joke over the past two seasons. They finished right around the middle of the pack in almost every defensive metric. And it was their combustible quarterback play that really doomed them in the end.

Nothing he did in Atlanta remotely hurts his case as a high-level coordinator. I mean, we've seen this story before, Jets fans. This is very similar to when the Jets let go of Todd Bowles and Robert Saleh. They both went on to coach high-level defenses to success. The only difference is that this time the Jets can be on the positive side of the dynamic.

The Falcons finished last season 13th in pass defense, 24th in rush defense, and 15th overall. According to Pro Football Focus (PFF), they ranked 17th in their defensive grading.

Comparably, the Jets finished 17th against the pass, 29th against the run, and 25th overall. PFF had them at 26th overall. There are levels to this. Morris' unit wasn't great, but they are a tier ahead of where the Jets are at now.

I would imagine Darren Mougey has already been on multiple phone calls with Morris since his firing. And if he hasn't, he should have. Morris won't last too long on the market — and for good reason. This is a veteran defensive mind who will positively impact some team in 2026.

If the Jets have any brains, which I don't know that they necessarily do, they will move heaven and earth to ensure that Morris is their guy and they are that team. If they let another team poach him, it would be front office malpractice.

The problem is, the Jets are no stranger to missing the mark. Let's hope they don't miss this one.