This was a long time coming for Jeff Ulbrich, a football lifer.
It, too, was a be-careful-what-you-wish-for moment.
On Monday night against the Bills at MetLife Stadium, Ulbrich, the 47-year-old, 10-year NFL linebacker and 14-year assistant coach, stood on the sideline as a head coach for the first time.
The result was hardly what he wanted, a wild, bizarre and sometimes sloppy 23-20 loss to the Bills.
It was, quite frankly, a very similar result to the recent results on Robert Saleh’s résumé, results that got Saleh fired on Tuesday.
On Saturday, at the end of a long, tumultuous and emotional week for Ulbrich, who’d been promoted to Jets head coach after Saleh, the man who brought him to the Jets, was fired five days earlier, he was asked when he first knew he wanted to be a coach.
“It was really late in my [playing] career, because I remember early in my career saying, ‘Why would I want to do that?’ ’’ Ulbrich recalled. “Later in my career … we had drafted [linebacker] Patrick Willis. I became the backup and, in doing so, I spent a lot of time with him. We watched a lot of tape together. We did a lot of extra [work] on the field.
“I still remember it was just like yesterday, we were playing the Cardinals and I’m on the sideline looking on. I remember he makes a play in the Cardinals game and snaps his eyes to me and I look at him. [The play] was something we had worked on and focused on that particular week, and that felt better than any play I ever made for myself. And it was like, ‘I’m hooked.’ ’’
Ulbrich’s romantic recollection of how he fell for coaching was miles from his mind during the evening of stress he would endure in his head-coaching debut.
His defense was roughed up by Josh Allen and the Buffalo running game. Allen completed 19 of 25 for 215 yards and two TDs. The Bills ran for more than 150 yards.
“That’s not the start we’re accustomed to having on defense,’’ Ulbrich said afterward. “That’s not winning football from a defensive perspective.’’
The Jets were penalized 11 times for 110 damaging yards, a sign of the very same poor discipline that Saleh was skewered for during his tenure.
Jets kicker Greg Zuerlein missed two short field goals, one in the third quarter of a 20-20 game and the other in the fourth with the game still tied, a crusher in a close game.
When it was all over, this is how Ulbrich summed up his first game as a head coach, both calling the defensive plays as he always did and overseeing the entire team:
“It was a challenge, but it was not overwhelming by any means,’’ he said.
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Ulbrich, impossibly upbeat even in the face of this ugly loss, remained unbowed in his belief for his team.
“At 2-4, we are by no means out of this thing,’’ he said. “By no means. I know the character of that locker room. I know the way we will respond.’’
Jets cornerback Sauce Gardner said he “got a lot of respect for’’ Ulbrich in his head coaching debut.
“He was trying to do everything he could to put us in position to win this game,’’ Gardner said. “All the credit to him for doing that and putting us in a perfect position to supposedly win a game like that.’’
Gardner said Ulbrich’s message to the players after the game was: “We’ve put ourselves in a hole and it’s gonna be an even better story, an amazing story, when we dig ourselves out of it.’’
