PHOENIX — If there was any question regarding the status of Geno Smith upon his return to the Jets, coach Aaron Glenn left no uncertainty about it.
“No doubt about it,” he said when asked in an interview with NFL Network here at the league’s annual meetings if Smith is the team’s starting quarterback heading into the 2026 season. “He’s our guy.”
The Jets acquired Smith, their former second-round draft pick whose first tenure with the team fizzled out rapidly, in a trade with the Raiders earlier this month. Glenn particularly touted Smith’s play in Seattle; he was the full-time starter from 2022-24, had a record of 27-22 and was named the NFL’s Comeback Player of the Year in 2022.
Of course, Glenn had been equally ebullient and just as definitive about the quarterback the Jets acquired a year earlier, so this endorsement will come with outside skepticism. A year ago, he was touting Justin Fields as the starter after the Jets signed him as a free agent. That decision fell apart quickly; Fields was benched midway through the 2025 season and traded to Kansas City earlier this month.
Glenn thinks this situation is different from last year’s.
“It means to have a bona fide starter come in and lead this offense to where it needs to go,” he said of Smith’s presence during the interview, his first public comments since the trade. “There is no doubt in my mind that we brought a competent starter here to this team and I look forward to him getting in the building.”
It wasn’t exactly a leap to name Smith the starter. The Jets currently have three quarterbacks on their roster: Smith, Brady Cook and Bailey Zappe. They could add one in the draft next month.
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.