Aaron Glenn learning how Jets' rebuild process can test patience
Jets head coach Aaron Glenn watches play against the Miami Dolphins in the second half on Sept. 29, 2025, in Miami Gardens, Fla. Credit: AP/Marta Lavandier
FLORHAM PARK, NJ – This is what a rebuild looks like.
It’s unsightly and uneven and hard to stomach. It is frustrating and infuriating. It is losing. Sometimes it can be a lot of losing.
The Jets haven’t had a true one of these in a while so it’s worth a refresher course on calibrating expectations. Sure, in recent years, the Jets have lost plenty of games and fallen short of expectations, too, but that was very different. Those teams were all-in on trying to win in the immediacy of their times. They just failed at it.
They always thought they were one someone away – a quarterback, an edge rusher, a receiver, a running back – but when they got what they wanted it flopped anyway.
They didn’t have much of an eye on the future or on building a foundation, they just wanted to go as far as they could as quickly as they could. They dumped money and resources into their present without much regard for what would happen once they either reached their goal or did not. And they knew that if they didn’t it would wind up being someone else’s problem anyway.
So now it is the problem of Aaron Glenn and Darren Mougey. They are trying to do it the right way. Sure they want to win games this season and that oh-fer yoke they wear as their record keeps getting heavier and more of a burden. But their ultimate goal wasn’t to come in and turn the franchise around in a month and reach the postseason this January. It was, and remains, to begin the arduous ascent toward respectability and confidence and the knowledge of how to win. If they can make that climb, they say, the victories will follow.
Glenn has gone through the process and come out the other side of it so it’s easy for him to remain patient and confident that the positivity of the end result is looming. He has repeatedly referenced his first year with the Lions when they started 0-8 before they transformed into perennial playoff attendants and championship contenders. And he has mentioned more than a few times the 1-15 debacle the Jets were in 1996, his third year in the league as a player. They won nine games the following season, reached the AFC Championship the year after that, and enjoyed six straight seasons without finishing with a losing record.
The lesson he has gleaned from those experiences is that losing can beget winning.
The majority of the Jets players? All they have learned in their NFL careers of various lengths is that losing leads to more losing. It’s why after each game – and especially after Monday night’s loss to the Dolphins – Garrett Wilson, Sauce Gardner, Breece Hall and others partake in their ritualistic refrains of frustration and disappointment. It’s certainly hard to blame them for it. If nothing else they should be commended for coming up with new phrases and metaphors for describing the same result over and over again. Those of us who chronicle the team can appreciate that.
Olu Fashanu, the second-year left tackle who is definitely part of the Jets’ long-term plans, said he tries to ignore the pain of the losses and the dread of them not leading to a payoff.
“In the league there is so much going on where if you try to think about it too much your head will go spinning,” he told Newsday on Wednesday. “For me I just think about what is right in front of me. I try to think about it week to week and just do everything I can to help the team win.”
But even when some Jets try to be fully bought in it can be challenging to convince the world – and maybe themselves -- that they actually are.
“You just focus on the standard, focus on the culture, focus on the DNA of this team,” defensive lineman Quinnen Williams told Newsday on Wednesday of balancing the competitive urgency and desire to win now with the patience required to build toward sustained success. It was an answer right off the Glenn-approved script. Williams even said he thinks the Jets do a good job of that.
But when asked if it is difficult to wait, especially for a player like himself who has already been waiting for seven seasons, Williams smiled, looked around the room, and paused in silence for about eight awkward yet wordlessly honest seconds.
“Let me think about that,” he finally said.
A few moments later he ended the interview without answering that question.
It is difficult, of course. It requires faith from a group of players who have had theirs burned over and over again.
That’s the big ask from Glenn. The first-year head coach has demanded plenty from his team since he arrived here. He wanted their attention and attendance in the offseason program and they showed up. He required a physical commitment through a grueling training camp and they gave it. Now he is asking them to hang on just a little longer, stay strong through these labor pains, and see it through to an end result he keeps telling them is just ahead… but may actually be weeks or even months away. Or may never arrive at all.
“The frustration will be there,” Glenn said on Wednesday, “but the confidence and the belief is going to be there because now we have answers and solutions to how we're going to get better. Does that mean we are going to get better right now? No. But you see it. You see it, and you see small glimpses of it, and that gives players the belief.”
Rebuilding is tough. It’s long. It’s not for everyone. If done properly it can lead to greatness, but there are no guarantees.
If Glenn is going to accomplish what he set out to do it’s not the mounting frustration and impatience of ownership or the media or the fans he has to watch out for. It’s the skepticism and doubt – spoken or not, overt or buried deep – that exists in his own four-loss locker room right now which are the biggest challenges to his plans reaching their fruition.
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.
