EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — If the New York Jets had finally claimed victory, and had presented their leader with a game ball in one of those uninhibited locker-room videos, Aaron Glenn could have gotten cute with his first W as a head coach.
With a wink and a smile, he could have answered question after question in his news conference by saying, “We’re on to Cincinnati.”
But as Glenn prepares to face the Bengals on the road, this was no time to borrow the famous line from happier times in Bill Belichick’s career. Glenn’s Jets can’t have a little postgame fun with anything because of this annoying truth that defines them:
They never, ever win a game.
They invent ways to lose on Sunday afternoon in the States or on Sunday morning (East Coast time) in London. They even come up small on a Monday night in South Florida against the Dolphins, now a 1-6 team after getting drilled by what had been the 1-5 Browns.
The Jets even fall at home to a Carolina Panthers team that had lost its three previous road games by a combined 50 points.
A Panthers team that held them to two lousy field goals in making the Jets, at 0-7, the greatest tragicomedy in American sports.
“You’ve got to keep fighting the fight,” former Jets coach Bill Parcells said of his protege, Glenn, after the 13-6 defeat.
Nothing in the NFL has ever been easier said than done.
The 2025 Jets will surely not become the NFL’s first 0-17 team. But until they get rid of that 0, the remote possibility remains intact. And while the whole dream-becoming-a-nightmare thing is the ultimate sports cliché, Aaron Glenn’s self-proclaimed dream job would descend into a, well …excuse me while I hunt for “nightmare” synonyms.
In a strange way, the Jets are a nationally relevant story as long as they remain winless. The minute they prevail on the scoreboard — assuming that happens at some point — they become the least compelling team in the sport.
Until it’s time to select a quarterback at the top of the draft next April.
Meanwhile, Glenn is so clearly suffering under the magnitude of the mess he’s inherited and the mess he’s made. Though Parcells said by phone, “I do speak with Aaron on occasion,” he didn’t want to publicly divulge what words of comfort and reassurance he might share with him in the aftermath of another embarrassing offensive effort.
Parcells was busy watching his “other” home team, the Giants, lose a remarkable game in Denver. “I do like Jaxson Dart,” he said, “but I’d want to see more before I’m ready to anoint him.”
Of course he does. But the Hall of Famer notarized the most elementary truth of modern professional football. “If you’re hurting at the quarterback position, it makes it a lot more difficult to win in the NFL,” Parcells said. “You would have to be completely dominant in other areas.”
No, the Jets are not completely dominant in other areas (though they’ve had their moments on defense and on special teams), and yes, they are hurting at the quarterback position.
Big time.
Glenn waited a week too long to bench Justin Fields in favor of Tyrod Taylor, and guess what? In the third quarter on Sunday, Taylor waited too long to throw to a wide-open Allen Lazard on a trick play that should have resulted in a touchdown, and got the pass knocked down. On the very next play, Taylor waited too long to hit a less-open Josh Reynolds on a throw that should have resulted in a touchdown, but ended up as an acrobatic Jaycee Horn interception instead.
Another Taylor pass for Reynolds was picked off by Horn in the fourth quarter, and that was pretty much that.
“I put a lot of fault on me,” Glenn said. “As the head coach of this team, I have to make sure that we do whatever we have to do to get our passing game going.”
Aaron Glenn says it was his call to make a quarterback change in today’s game:
“We needed a spark at that time. I felt it was the right time to do it” pic.twitter.com/TvBjE8Gfw6
— Jets Videos (@snyjets) October 19, 2025
It would be a whole lot easier to get the passing game going if the Jets had a worthwhile passer. They guaranteed $30 million to Fields in free agency, only to find out the hard way why Mike Tomlin benched him for Russell Wilson in Pittsburgh.
And how would the whole operation look right now had the Jets used their seventh overall pick last spring on Dart? Nobody had the Ole Miss star that high on the board, but still, the Jets would be in a much better place with a young, dynamic playmaker at quarterback rather than a solid pick, Armand Membou, at tackle.
It would have been awfully nice if the Jets lucked into something like that for a change.
But now they’ll have to draft Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza or Oregon’s Dante Moore or some other arm who will, hopefully, stick around a lot longer than the likes of Geno Smith, Sam Darnold and Zach Wilson.
Not that there’s any guarantee rookie general manager Darren Mougey is capable of identifying that prospect, or that rookie head coach Aaron Glenn and rookie offensive coordinator Tanner Engstrand are capable of developing him.
The Patriots hired a head coach with a winning record in Mike Vrabel, and the best offensive coordinator of his generation in Josh McDaniels, and they are 5-2. The Jets hired novices and, for now, are paying a heavy price for it. Glenn has been eaten alive by the whole miserable experience.
He desperately needs a quarterback, but before he gets one, he also needs a clue. Starting with last Sunday in London, when he snapped at a perfectly valid question over the possibility of doing what he did against the Panthers — bench Fields — Glenn committed a series of unforced errors that only made a tough job tougher.
In an effort to defend Fields’ processing time, the coach compared him to future first-ballot Hall of Famers Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen — a no-no in any context. Glenn also maintained that if the ultra-conservative Fields started misfiring down the field, media members would complain about that too — a Loserville observation if there ever was one.
Aaron Glenn and Justin Fields are the worst Head Coach/QB combo in NFL history by a LANDSLIDE
pic.twitter.com/L5FBxLmvL1
— John Frascella (Football) (@NFLFrascella) October 19, 2025
For the second straight week, Glenn presided over some play-calling follies at the end of the first half and got himself and his team booed. Fields followed up his minus-10 net passing yards against Denver by throwing for a grand total of 46 yards before getting replaced. On top of Garrett Wilson’s injury, now Sauce Gardner has a concussion and Breece Hall is banged up.
This could get really ugly, especially if the players start using the mounting losses as a reason to tune out their head coach.
“I don’t see that,” Glenn said, “because the messaging has always been consistent, and they know exactly what it is and what they have to do. And here’s what gives me hope as I go through these weeks … is, man, just exactly how they come out on Wednesday in practice, and how they come out on Thursday in practice, and the same with on Friday.”
But none of this will come out on Sunday until the Jets find themselves their own Jaxson Dart.
And until Aaron Glenn stops getting in his own way on and off the field.