Aaron Glenn's Jets unwatchable and unacceptable
Jets head coach Aaron Glenn reacts during a game against the Dallas Cowboys at MetLife Stadium on Sunday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Few fans expected the Jets to be good, but every fan has a right to expect better than this.
It has been a season at turns unacceptable, unwatchable and unbelievable, the promise of a fresh start under rookie coach Aaron Glenn thoroughly unfulfilled.
The latest indignity came on Sunday at MetLife Stadium, where the Jets were back home to face the mediocre Cowboys, aiming to show the world they at least are building something better.
Instead, they lost, 37-22, and fell to 0-5 under Glenn. The game was not nearly as competitive as that score suggests, thanks to some garbage-time scoring by the Jets after an embarrassment of a first half.
The problem is not primarily that the Jets are losing games but the fact that they are showing no significant progress.
Three key points of emphasis have been avoiding turnovers, forcing turnovers and limiting penalties.
So the Jets lost a fumble by Breece Hall on the biggest play of the game, became the first NFL team since at least 1933 to open the season without a takeaway after five games and had 10 accepted penalties for 61 yards.
“It’s hard to process,” Sauce Gardner said. “It keeps me up at night trying to process stuff . . . Why are there times something is going good for us and something bad has to happen?”
Why? Because the Jets make bad things happen.
Why was Dak Prescott able to find George Pickens for a 43-yard touchdown pass with Gardner covering him one-on-one in the third quarter?
The game already was lost at that point, as the touchdown and extra point made it 30-3. But it was a bad look to see one of the team’s biggest young stars have that done to him.
Or was it him? Gardner twice after the game alluded to the play happening as the result of a mistake that was not his, finally calling it simply a “busted coverage.”
Maybe that’s even worse.
This team’s lack of discipline on the field continues to be a bad reflection on Glenn, on his staff, on the players themselves and on the won-loss record.
It’s fine for Glenn to miss the playoffs. Heck, it’s even fine to go 0-17, if there are signs of life. But what his team put on the field on Sunday was not acceptable.
By the fourth quarter, the stadium mostly was emptied of Jets fans, leaving ecstatic Dallas supporters to start chanting “Let’s go Cowboys!” with about 11 minutes left.
“It’s a tough game and it’s coached and played by real men,” Glenn said. “Listen, I’m going to embrace this challenge just like any other challenge.”
Glenn will try to do that in the next year or two with the help of general manager Darren Mougey. It will not be easy. Justin Fields has had some moments, but he does not appear to be the quarterback who will lead the Jets to their first Super Bowl since the 1968 season.
Garrett Wilson is one of the most talented receivers in the NFL, but receivers cannot do this stuff by themselves.
“No one guaranteed us anything coming into this season,” Wilson said. “We’ve got to put our heads down and keep working . . . We’re being coached right. We’re being taught right.”
Asked if this is all part of the natural growing pains of a new staff, Gardner said, “I don’t know what it is. Like I told you, this has been keeping me up at night.”
Gardner said of the overall process, “That’s the thing about having faith, about being bought in. We know that the coaches that are here are the right ones. We just believe in them and trust in them, and they’re doing the same thing for us.”
Jets fans do not ask for or expect much after decades of heartache. They just ask for a product worth their time, money and emotional investment.
Sunday was none of that. It’s pathetic. The Jets have not made the playoffs since the 2010 season and will not make them this season. But at least put on a show. Is that asking too much?
Glenn said he was disappointed in how deflated his team became after Hall’s game-turning fumble.
“I have to look at myself and see what I have to do to get these guys going in a situation like that,” he said, “because that’s football, and in this game, the mentally tough are the ones that survive.”
Said Wilson, “I still have that faith that we’re going to be better off for it. I feel like we are building something in that locker room.”
Prove it, then. Soon. This is not OK.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
