Tom Rock: Aaron Glenn faces make-or-break season in second year as Jets head coach
Jets head coach Aaron Glenn during training camp at the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center in Florham Park, N.J., on Wednesday. Credit: Ed Murray
FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — Aaron Glenn wouldn’t come out and say what the goals and objectives are for his second season as head coach of the Jets.
Part of it is because he wants to keep such matters in-house.
“No slogan, no hype speech,” he said on Wednesday after the team’s first full practice of training camp, adding that such classified files and deep organizational priorities should be locked away from public view.
“It’s not fair to myself, not fair to the players, to give you my messaging to the players on what our goals are,” he said.
The other part of it? The bigger part of it?
He doesn’t really have to share the stakes and yardsticks that are set ahead of this squad because we all know them already.
This is a prove-it year for Glenn. Period.
He did little to demonstrate that he is up to the challenge of returning this franchise to respectability and order — never mind the competitive success and glory that he trumpeted at his introductory news conference a year and a half ago — during his rookie lap as an NFL head coach. He spent most of that season stepping in potholes, many of which he himself created, while the Jets scuffled along through a miserable three-win schedule.
Now he heads into Year 2, potentially a little wiser, a little more aware of the landscape, and with a little more hands-on control of his destiny while he returns to running the defense.
But there still hasn’t been any concrete indication that he is a guy up to the immense job of turning the fortunes of the Jets from 15 straight years of ineptitude toward a future of promise and possibility.
That’s what this season is about. Period. He enters training camp as the team’s biggest long-term question mark. Before they move forward with the big leaps they expect to make next offseason, the Jets have to answer it.
If it’s clear by the end of this season that Glenn can’t get it done, he’ll be gone. Someone else will come in, someone else will help pick the next quarterback in April’s draft, and someone else will face the same uphill trudge that Glenn has been trying to get a foothold on since he first reentered the building.
Does that mean there is a mandate on making the playoffs? Winning a certain number of games? No, although those would certainly help.
It just means Glenn needs to start looking and feeling like a real NFL head coach. It means the Jets need to start looking and feeling like a real NFL team.
The vision is coming together on the roster that general manager Darren Mougey has assembled, even if it remains a tad far off in the distance. The pieces are there, even if some of them, like quarterback Geno Smith, are only seat-fillers until the Jets can tap into a fresh optimism at the most important position on the field at this time a year from now.
It is up to Glenn to make it all function.
“There is a better comfort level going into Year 2,” Mougey said of Glenn’s second go-around. “My relationship with AG has only gotten stronger. We have dialogue every day. We’re much more in sync . . . I think we all have high expectations for ourselves. That’s players, that’s coaches, myself included.”
If those expectations are not met, then changes need to take place.
That’s players. That’s coaches. That’s everyone included.
Glenn must make a huge second-year jump if there is going to be a third year for him in this role.
There is certainly a chance he can despite the lack of evidence to trust in him thus far. People can learn on the job and improve. Glenn’s mentor, Bill Parcells, is a perfect example of that. He was a flop the Giants wanted to replace after just one season. Now he is in the Hall of Fame and one of the most revered coaches in the history of the sport.
Beyond the stumbling start that made him appear to be overmatched, though, Glenn gave no indication of being on that path last year.
He at least seems to recognize those shortcomings. So he has been open about admitting to the “blind spots” that he whiffed on last year. Although he refuses to list them and the lessons he learned publicly, any Jets fan who half paid attention to last season can certainly come up with their own list of his myriad miscues. They are among the other not-very-secret secrets he tries to keep.
Glenn overhauled his coaching staff, which is not something that typically occurs in the second year of a regime, and placed himself in charge of the defense.
He said he wants to make his messaging to the team more “consistent and narrow” than the flailing ones he seemed to offer last year. And he may even listen more to the players than he did, especially to the veterans he helped bring in through trades and free agency who have seen the Jets from an outsider’s perspective and may be able to help pinpoint organizational weaknesses.
“Everybody’s goal is to win,” Glenn said. “Everybody’s goal is to be competitive. Everybody’s goal is to improve.”
Glenn’s goal in 2026 is to do all of those things, too.
The Jets’ goal is to figure out if he can.
There’s absolutely no secret about that.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
