As one of the crucial in-demand head teaching candidates within the NFL, Aaron Glenn interviewed with a number of groups final season. However by his personal admission, he needed just one.
The New York Jets.
A former Jet earlier than a extremely profitable profession in teaching, Glenn promised modifications throughout his introduction as New York’s coach in January.
“Put your seat belts on,” he mentioned, “and prepare for the experience.”
Ten months later, that experience’s trajectory has gone straight down.
And Sunday’s Week 7 loss introduced the Jets nearer to the distress the franchise hoped Glenn’s appointment would make a factor of the previous.
In a 13-6 loss to Carolina that dropped the Jets to 0-7, together with 0-5 at residence, New York benched the quarterback, Justin Fields, it had paid $30 million assured to signal as a free agent solely final spring.
It is simply the third time within the Jets’ 65-year historical past, becoming a member of 1996 and 2020, that it has began a season 0-7, and Glenn is the franchise’s first coach to lose his first seven video games.
The Jets, the NFL’s lone remaining winless group, continued a number of worrying traits which have contributed to their winless season — uneven quarterback play, a porous offensive line and an lack of ability to pressure turnovers on protection.
“We now have to have the ability to pull out these low-scoring video games,” Glenn mentioned Sunday. “The factor is, our guys are combating. There isn’t any stop.”
The Jets, who personal the NFL’s third worst profitable proportion (.350) since they final made the playoffs in 2010, are accustomed to head-shaking outcomes. They entered final season with Tremendous Bowl ambitions with quarterback Aaron Rodgers wholesome, solely to fireside their coach and prime soccer government en path to a 5-12 document. Late within the season, The Athletic reported that the teenage sons of proprietor Woody Johnson influenced some roster choices and that one commerce had been nixed as a result of the proprietor felt a participant’s ranking within the online game “Madden” was not excessive sufficient. (A Jets spokesperson on the time mentioned the sons’ enter was “used as a reference level.”)
This season was supposed to be a brand new period. Following the criticism of 2024, Johnson reportedly gave up some measure of management over group choices, and the group’s new administration lower unfastened Rodgers and signed Fields, a former excessive first-round choose. Then, in Week 1, they needed to watch Rodgers gloat after he outdueled Fields to beat his former group.
New York didn’t signal Fields, anticipating a quarterback identified extra for his mobility than his passing skill, to dramatically change his sport. But by Week 6, issues had gone backward. Fields threw for less than 45 yards, and New York completed with a franchise-worst minus-10 yards web passing.
Getting into Sunday, the Jets owned the NFL’s third-worst offense and Twentieth-ranked protection. Nonetheless, the matchup towards the Panthers appeared to supply certainly one of New York’s finest alternatives this season for its first win. Although Carolina had received two consecutive video games, it was hardly formidable, having been outscored general for the season. The Panthers’ protection ranked twenty first in factors allowed.
But the Jets’ offense was once more impotent. It produced solely 12 first downs on 11 drives and failed to attain a landing within the first half for a sixth consecutive sport — the primary time the franchise has performed that since 2000. With the ball close to midfield within the remaining minute earlier than halftime, the Jets didn’t even attempt to throw a Hail Mary, the primary half as a substitute ending on a sack.
Trailing 13-3 within the third quarter, the Jets benched Fields, which Glenn, who had beforehand supported Fields, mentioned was his choice. Fields’ backup, Tyrod Taylor, went on to throw two interceptions.
Fields mentioned he was “a bit bit” shocked however “cannot be mad on the choice,” he informed reporters. “I perceive why.”
Whilst Carolina misplaced its beginning quarterback, Bryce Younger, to an ankle damage late within the third quarter and by no means scored once more, the Jets nonetheless couldn’t take benefit. Significantly eye-opening has been New York’s lack of ability on protection to pressure turnovers; it has produced only one, fewest within the NFL, in seven video games. Glenn’s protection in Detroit final season completed within the prime third of making takeaways.
“Clearly, wins remedy loads on this league,” mentioned Taylor, Fields’ successor. “And we haven’t had an opportunity to place a kind of collectively.
“The message needs to be the identical, the work has to nonetheless be performed all through the week, and us popping out and executing at a excessive stage, one play at a time, is what we want on sport day. Not spurts of it, not 1 / 4 of it, not a half of it, however for a full 4 quarters.”
