Aaron Glenn gets hit hard: He's the coach of the J-E-T-S
Jets head coach Aaron Glenn speaks to the media during training camp at the Atlantic Health Training Center on Saturday in Florham Park, N.J. Credit: Corey Sipkin
FLORHAM PARK, N.J.
It’s been about six months since he landed the job, but on Saturday morning, it became clear to Aaron Glenn for the first time that he really and truly is the head coach of the Jets.
During stretching just before the team’s Green and White scrimmage, which is about as close to a game as a practice can get with offenses driving the field against defenses, the fans in the stands let out their familiar refrain of support with a J-E-T-S chant.
There was nothing more special about this one than any of the others that have rung out over the decades. And as a former Jets player, Glenn had heard it countless times before.
This version, though, for an unexplained reason, plunked him right in the feels.
“Today was the first day that it really hit me,” he said of being triggered by the fans — and being surprised by his own reaction. “I don’t know why, but it just hit me. It hit me pretty hard . . . I took a moment to myself. The only thing I was thinking about was just that I was grateful.”
It’s nice that the chant wound up snapping him into a reality he clearly had been straight-arming for some time. A rare moment of sappiness from a coach who has exuded straightforward confidence and bravado. It was as if, just for a moment, he grabbed the remote and flipped from ESPN to the Hallmark Channel just to see what it was showing.
Even if that chant hadn’t delivered such a punch, though, there was another element lurking in Saturday’s festivities that would have awoken Glenn to the reality of his new position: the dozen or so penalties committed mostly by his offense during the workout.
They were miscues that pushed drives out of scoring position, took points off the board and, at several points, elicited harsh groans and some boos from the very fans whose spirited spelling of the team’s name had made Glenn so emotional just a short time earlier.
And so, on the day Glenn finally came to terms with the emotions of his new job, he also came face-to-face with the enormity of it. In the course of less than two hours, he experienced the highs and the lows that almost assuredly will accompany him on this journey, however long it lasts.
“Listen,” Glenn said, fully back from his emotional digression, “we continue to emphasize it, and we watch it as a group and we try to understand exactly why did it happen . . . We had some great runs on a number of those penalties, and guess what, it doesn’t matter now because they bring them back. So we’ve got to do a good job of coaching and the players have to do a good job of accepting the coaching and going out there and executing.”
The sloppiness of the offense invaded the entire scrimmage. It began on the very first play with a flag for holding during a drive on which a 38-yard field goal by Nick Folk was negated by a delay of game. Folk missed the ensuing 43-yard attempt.
Glenn insisted that the penalty be enforced even though the specialists had to run over from an adjacent field to execute the play.
“I didn’t care,” he said. “Get lined up, let’s get ready to go. That was more on me just creating a statement, to be honest with you, but we have to be ready to go in that situation.”
It didn’t end there. The second offensive unit had a long pass on third-and-15 from Tyrod Taylor to Kene Nwangwu negated by a holding penalty and wound up punting. The third team had two holding penalties on its opening drive. The starters came back and drew a holding penalty, a false start and a delay of game on the same possession.
Taylor’s 9-yard touchdown pass to Stone Smartt also drew a flag for a false start, but it was picked up and the touchdown counted. It was unclear if the officials — a full team of NFL zebras — discussed overturning the call or simply let the offense score out of pity.
“I’m glad we had the refs out there, because that’s one thing that we want to hit, and we want to make sure we hit those hard,” Glenn said of the penalties, a problem that has plagued the Jets for the past few years and certainly predates his return to the organization. “There’s no excuses. Our players understand that because we know penalties, they are discipline issues, and we’ve got to make sure we are more disciplined in that aspect on both sides of the ball. We will get those cleaned up, I promise you that, but there is a lot of work to do.”
Perhaps more than he realized.
So welcome back to the Jets, Coach Glenn, after this unofficial first day of self-awareness. It’s a place where getting thousands to spell the team’s name may be easier than getting 11 on the right snap count, and where barking about concepts such as discipline, accountability and attention to detail remains very different from actually practicing them.
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.
