Aaron Glenn won over New York Jets fans throughout his first summer as an NFL head coach. Through his energetic interviews and his physical practices, fans bought into the cultural shift that Glenn seemed to be creating.
Once the results started coming in, though, Glenn lost much of that goodwill. Seven games into his debut regular season, Glenn’s changes led to absolutely nothing on the field, as the Jets were 0-7.
It marked the worst start to a head coach’s tenure in Jets franchise history, which is quite the feat for an organization that has seen only one coach post a winning record across multiple seasons: Bill Parcells.
Parcells happens to be Glenn’s former coach from his time as a player with the Jets. As Glenn strives to meet the standards of the legendary football mind (who still mentors his former cornerback to this day), his challenge is to squash the losing culture that has been firmly entrenched in Florham Park, N.J.
There’s a long way for Glenn to go in that journey, especially after a concerning 0-7 start. Glenn hopes to use the rest of the 2025 season to restore some of the optimism that had existed around himself and the team before their woeful opening run.
After two straight wins, Glenn is slowly winning Jets fans back over. For Glenn, though, his progress goes beyond just wins and losses, especially with a team that just dealt away two of its best players. The key for Glenn is to separate himself as a coach from the plethora of failed Jets leaders who came before him.
In the Jets’ 27-20 win over the Cleveland Browns, Glenn created separation from his predecessors in one critical area of the head coaching role: looking prepared out of the bye week.
Jets tackle post-bye woes
Coming into Sunday, the Jets were 1-8 over their last nine post-bye games. They averaged 15.7 points per game and allowed 27.7 points per game, giving them an average scoring margin of -12.0.
Even the lone victory did not show a team that looked prepared to play after the week off. It occurred in Week 8 of the 2023 season, when the Jets barely scraped by the Giants in overtime with a 13-10 win. The Giants spent most of the game refusing to pass the ball with Tommy DeVito at quarterback, yet the Jets still need a miraculous sequence of events to win.
Simply put, the Jets have consistently looked unprepared coming out of the bye week. It’s an issue that has persisted regardless of the coach, whether it was Todd Bowles, Adam Gase, Robert Saleh, or interim coach Jeff Ulbrich.
For that reason, it’s meaningful that the Jets pulled off a victory in Glenn’s first post-bye week game.
It was far from the cleanest win. Cleveland is a fledgling 2-7 squad, and the Jets were outgained by 109 yards of offense. New York mainly won because of two special teams touchdowns, a feat they will not repeat consistently.
Nonetheless, the Jets took a 14-7 lead in the first quarter and never fell behind on the scoreboard as they methodically marched to the 27-20 win. They came to the field ready to play and got the job done.
The post-bye success is especially noteworthy because of what preceded it. In Week 8, the Jets went through an incredibly emotional game. Shortly after learning of the passing of franchise legend Nick Mangold (who was honored at MetLife Stadium before Sunday’s win), the Jets went out and got the first win of Aaron Glenn’s career with a second-half comeback on the road.
It’s easy for a team to have a letdown performance after a game like that, especially with an extra week to soak it in. But the Jets came out in Week 10 and handled business at home.
This is a small victory for Glenn and the Jets, who are still 2-7. There is a long way to go from here. Two close wins against a pair of struggling teams are not enough to change the franchise’s outlook overnight.
Still, in this specific yet important category, Glenn seized the opportunity to set himself apart from the failed Jets head coaches who preceded him. Going forward, he must find more ways to separate from his predecessors.
Glenn will have a tremendous opportunity on Thursday night against the division-rival Patriots, who are tied atop the NFL standings at 8-2. The Jets have not won on the road against a team that finished with a winning record since they beat the Pittsburgh Steelers in Week 4 of the 2022 season; they’ve lost 12 straight games of this variety since then.
That Steelers team finished just 9-8, though. The Jets’ last road win against a team that finished with 10 or more wins (as the Patriots likely will) came in 2020 against the Rams, although that game was played in front of an empty stadium.
To find their last road victory against a 10+ win team with fans in the building, we’d have to go back to Week 17 of 2019 against the Bills. However, even that game has a caveat: The Bills were resting their starters.
If we want to find the Jets’ last “real” road win against a 10+ win team, we have to go all the way back to Week 15 of the 2010 season, when they pulled off a 22-17 win in Pittsburgh. Since then, the Jets are 0-37 in such games, excluding the 2020 Rams game and the 2019 Bills game. Saleh, Gase, and Bowles each failed to collect a single one of these victories.
Glenn already recorded one atypical Jets achievement with the post-bye win. If he can back it up with a road prime-time win against a likely 10+ win team, he will start to create some real separation from classic “Same Old Jets” expectations.