After just four seasons, Lions head coach Dan Campbell is already building branches for his own personal coaching tree. Both of his coordinators, offensive coordinator Ben Johnson and defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn, left to become head coaches of the Chicago Bears and New York Jets, respectively.

Both have worked their way up the ranks over the years. For Glenn, he has made a very successful transition from player to coach. After a 15-year career, Glenn became an NFL coach in 2014 as an assistant defensive backs coach with the Cleveland Browns. He moved to New Orleans in 2016 to coach the Saints‘ defensive backs for five seasons. In 2021, he got the call from Campbell to run the defense in Detroit. Now, at 52 years old, he is the man for the first time as head coach of the Jets.

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For Glenn, Campbell was very instrumental is shaping him to become a head coach. He shared his thoughts over the weekend during Jets rookie minicamp.

“I just talked about that before from being DB coach to a coordinator, to a coordinator, to the head coach,” Glenn said, via the New York Daily News. “I give a lot of credit man, to Dan Campbell for putting me in positions to be head coach for the Lions on certain situations and for him putting me in the front of the room for him asking my advice on how practice should go, so it was a really a seamless transition for me to script practice.

“It was a seamless transition for me to be in front of the team, so all those things he’s done may actually prepped me to be in this position, so I’ll give him a lot of credit for that.”

Part of Glenn’s work under Campbell that helped his path included the 2022 Senior Bowl, in which the Lions were one of the staffs leading the American and National teams. Campbell stepped back and let his assistants get more work and taking on more responsibilities throughout the week. Glenn was more involved with the team, though it was Duce Staley, running backs coach and assistant head coach at the time, who served as head coach for the American team.

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Between that and work over the years, Glenn became a hot commodity in the coaching world. With the Lions winning 15 games last season, now was the time to strike while the iron was hot. The Jets came calling and now Glenn is ready to turn around a franchise that has the longest playoff drought in sports — New York has not made the postseason since the 2010 season.

This article originally appeared on Lions Wire: Jets coach Aaron Glenn credit Lions, Dan Campbell for prepping him