Aaron Glenn sounding more and more like Joe Judge . . . and that's not good
Jets head coach Aaron Glenn in 2025, left, and former Giants head coach Joe Judge in 2022.
At various points this week, Aaron Glenn said the Jets’ special teams unit did “a hell of a job” against the Broncos, praised the defense for its improved play, stressed that quarterback Justin Fields had been performing well in his first four starts before his most recent setback and noted that while the offensive line certainly has room for improvement, “I really like where our guys are at.”
All of that is probably true.
That doesn’t mean we need to hear it, though. Not now. Not when the Jets are 0-6. Not when they were just manhandled in their London loss to the Broncos after they turned in a pair of historically sloppy performances against the Dolphins and Cowboys.
Nor should we be getting a coach who acts publicly indignant about obvious questions regarding personnel, panders to a fan base as if he is one of them, or constantly reminds everyone how bad his previous teams were during his times as a player and as a coach before some of them they made stark turnarounds.
There isn’t enough sugar in Willy Wonka’s factory to coat this Jets season so far, and yet Glenn seems to be constantly trying to sell to us the idea that foundations take time to build, progress is being made, they are getting closer to a breakthrough success and our eyes which watch these games are deceiving us into thinking that the Jets are a lost cause.
Again, that may all be true. It just rings hollow.
Save those pep talks for the players and the staff. There are only two things those on the outside want from their football coach: The first is results. In lieu of those is remorse.
Bill Parcells, Glenn’s mentor, knew that. His most famous line is, “You are what your record says you are.” Right now the Jets are winless.
Glenn, though, keeps talking about “instant coffee” and “improvements” he sees. He doesn’t sound anything like Parcells. Nor does he echo others he learned under such as Sean Payton and Dan Campbell. Heck, he doesn’t even sound like the Aaron Glenn who took the job in January and promised a no-excuses culture of accountability.
Glenn is, however, starting to give off the kind of vibes another coach in this market emitted as he was quickly getting swallowed up by a job that proved to be a little too big for him.
Joe Judge wasn’t an awful coach, at least not all the time, but he had some pretty awful teams during his two years with the Giants. By the end of his tenure here, though, he spent more time trying to publicly defend his policies and campaigning for more time than he did actually fixing anything. Like Glenn, Judge made some valid points, even during his epic 11-minute ramble in Chicago that proved to be more of a eulogy to his career than a winning argument for what he had accomplished.
But nobody wants to hear that kind of “you don’t know what I know” stuff when the team stinks. Not fans, and certainly not owners. Because they know what they know, too.
“The focus this week is winning the game, hands down, point blank,” Glenn said on Friday just before putting the final touches on a week of preparation for the surging Panthers at MetLife Stadium on Sunday.
Good. With that we can all agree.
“But,” he continued, “also making sure that we improve . . . We’re not running away from where we are, but we’re looking to improve.”
The coach who insists that there are no moral victories sure has a shelf full of moral trophies he loves to show off.
Now, does this mean Glenn will be a flop? That he must be replaced at once? No. Given the right roster and the proper support, the belief here is that he will succeed at this unbelievably daunting task he has set out to accomplish and turn the Jets into winners.
But at this point these Jets are what their record says they are, not what their coach says they are.
Just as teams like the Jets need to learn to stop losing before they can win, Glenn needs to learn how to lose so he can get to the winning. He needs to be more humbled, more forthcoming, and yes, more frustrated than he has been. Those highlights? The parts that are getting better? Save them for the team meetings. Keep their chins up. They’re the ones that need to hear that stuff, not us. They’re the ones that need to hold onto that “rope” he is always talking about not letting go of, not us.
“Who says we can’t get this thing going by this week?” Glenn said when asked about his message to veteran players on the team and defensive tackle Quinnen Williams in particular. “Who says we can’t get this thing going by this week [and keep it] going into next year?”
Until he and the Jets do that, though, it’s all just meaningless words for us. Out here in the general public, those things sound like garbled noise and excuses and flailing grasps for sympathy and patience.
Glenn never promised anything would be easy. He never said the Jets would make the playoffs this season or win a Super Bowl within the next two. But he did say things would get better.
Bottom line: They haven’t. Not yet. And it’s treating us like fools to continue to insist otherwise before they actually do.
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.
