Robert Saleh is back in the head-coaching chair for the first time since the Jets fired him mid-season in 2024, and Tennessee handed him the keys back in January. So when Big Cat and PFT Commenter got him on stools for a live Pardon My Take taping, it doubled as a proper welcome-back tour: ping pong tables, a Titans mascot bit, head-coaching hypotheticals, the works.
Big Cat asked Saleh how his body feels now that he's away from "the substation," and Saleh ran with the power-line real estate bit.
That "substation" line is a not-so-subtle poke at how brutal the Jets job had become by the time Saleh got let go, and he leaned into it instead of dodging it. It's the kind of self-aware answer that plays well on a podcast built on guys being in on their own jokes, and it set the tone for the rest of the sit-down.
The heavier stuff came when the conversation turned to Aaron Rodgers tearing his Achilles just 4 snaps into the 2023 season opener, the injury that turned a Super Bowl-hyped Jets year into a lost one almost instantly. Saleh was the one who had to manage a locker room that watched its whole season evaporate in real time.
Saleh described what the mood was actually like in the building right after Rodgers went down.
There was also a real football nugget buried in the bit: Tennessee now sits in the AFC South, meaning Saleh faces Jaguars coach Liam Coen twice a year. The two have history — Saleh, then the 49ers' defensive coordinator, got into a heated postgame exchange with Coen in 2025 over comments about Jacksonville's signal-calling that Coen took as an accusation of sign-stealing. Saleh later walked it back, calling it a "wrong choice of words," but the two clearly haven't forgotten it.
PMT asked point blank whether Saleh is fired up to see Liam Coen twice a year now that they're division rivals.
Naturally, the internet zeroed in on the dumbest part of the episode, which is exactly how PMT likes it. PFT Commenter's bit about Saleh being "brought to you by Nutrafol" — a not-so-subtle crack at how full his hair still looks — got its own life online within seconds of the episode dropping, per @StooliesClub's recap of the line.
The Nutrafol bit tied back into an actual sponsor FAQ segment about how PMT's rotating cast keeps their hair looking full.
None of it changes the fact that Saleh has a real job to do — rebuilding a Titans team that just handed him the keys after a lost Jets tenure. But for one episode, the appearance did exactly what these PMT sit-downs are designed to do: humanize a coach who's about to be judged purely on wins and losses, before the season starts actually counting.