Matt Burke held an interesting title with the New York Jets in his lone season with the club.
In 2021, Burke was the “game management coach” under rookie coach Robert Saleh. The title alone seemed redundant to what Saleh’s duties actually were as the man in the charge on New York’s sidelines.
However, Burke elaborated in his introductory presser on March 8 how the opportunity allowed him to meld the analytics side of the game with the game day management to help Saleh.
“He was obviously a first-time head coach and wanted someone to bridge the gap between analytics and game day management and coaching,” Burke said. “He sort of asked me if I would kind of help him get things up to speed in that role. It was a cool opportunity for me. I was living in South Jersey at the time, so it was an easy transition that way.
Basically, during the week I would put together stuff, teaching tapes for the players, for the whole team. Again, I was very thankful coach Saleh gave me the opportunity to address the whole team a couple of times a week just on situational football, stuff that’s happening around the league, penalties, whatever it may be, two-minute stuff that came up that I could teach and educate the team.”
During the games, Burke would wear a full headset and suggest to Saleh when to take a timeout, possibly throw the challenge flag, or be alert to any situations that could be on the horizon throughout the game.
“I’m grateful that he gave me a lot of work to do for kind of a made-up job, just sort of plugged me in a way late,” said Burke. “It was a great experience, really having to help him talk him through challenges and timeouts and how to use things. ‘Hey, look out for this,’ all the end of game situation stuff, that was kind of my world.”
Burke is overseeing the defense as the Texans’ defensive coordinator. Nevertheless his role is similar to what he had with Saleh with the Jets: helping the coach.
“If that’s something he wants me to be a part of with him and help him as we go through that process, I’d be more than happy to because it was a great experience,” Burke said. “Contact with the league office on a lot of stuff, just around the league and obviously going through that season and the game situations really helped broaden my horizon.”
