Quarterbacks are protected more energetically than the Pope. Empty shotgun sets are all the rage in short-yardage situations. Rugby scrums when over a full yard (or even two) is needed is the norm—at least for one team that perfected its craft.
This isn’t your father’s National Football League.
Hey, evolution happens. Ask a 1930s George Halas diehard if he could ever envision a quarterback throwing for 4,000 yards in a single season. (And pray he’s not law enforcement with a readily available straitjacket.)
Three decades later, Joe Namath turned that once unimaginable feat into a reality—while simply “trying to get by.” The poor fella never received enough attention from the ladies, I surmise.
Despite Namath’s time with the ladies, or his drinking, or his conniving every now and again, which happens to be American, evolution happens.
Just as Namath’s on-field brashness and off-the-field personality evolved professional sports into something we’re more familiar with today—a crossover between sports and pop culture—the modern league that plays for dough has entered an unfamiliar state.
Who can both recognize and capitalize on such a unique state, is the question?
Aaron Glenn and the New York Jets‘ chosen path deals much more with the evolution of the sport than anything else. With Justin Fields in tow, it’s not only our responsibility to analyze his game tape but also to dig deeper into the mindset behind what the move portrays as the organization’s vision.
Something is currently being conjured up and imagined. A certain set of elements are being pondered. Specific details and specifics related to Fields’s skillset are the focal point.
What is it exactly? I have no idea.
Will it work? I don’t know.
All I know is that this is the mindset. It’s about wholly ingratiating yourself within the evolution in an attempt to snag a piece of it—particularly for an old-school coach like Aaron Glenn.
It’s a copycat league
The NFL is a copycat league. Period.
For the first time in this pass-happy era, a truly rush-first team won the Super Bowl. Patrick Mahomes’s Kansas City Chiefs don’t fall into that category, nor did Tom Brady’s New England Patriots or Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Sean McVay’s Los Angeles Rams, or Doug Pederson’s Philadelphia Eagles.
If we consider the Rex Ryan-with-the-Jets era as the time period when the NFL truly changed its stripes—which makes sense based on the passing and offensive explosion—there isn’t an extremely rush-heavy champion to be found.
There’s no chance Peyton Manning’s Denver Broncos can suffice. Eli Manning’s 2011 New York Giants ranked dead last in rushing. How about Aaron Rodgers’s Green Bay Packers?
Not even close.
Joe Flacco’s 2012 Baltimore Ravens finished 10th in rushing and 15th in passing. Perhaps the best example is the 2013 Seattle Seahawks, who won the title with rushing and defense at MetLife Stadium (fourth in rushing, 26th in passing).
That was until now.
The Eagles’ most recent Vince Lombardi Trophy marked the first time a truly rush-heavy team won it all in this era. Instead of a legendary pocket-passing quarterback leading the way, Jalen Hurts did his thing to help the league’s second-best rushing attack (and 29th-best passing attack).
It goes so much deeper than just rushing the ball; it’s about rushing the ball in a designed way that includes the quarterback.
We have yet to scratch the surface
Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson is a two-time NFL MVP who has firmly established himself as one of today’s greats. Sure, he’s still looking to bust through the playoff door, which has many of the traditionalists saying, “See, it’s tough to win a title with a rushing quarterback.”
Nevertheless, there’s no arguing about his current stature. It works.
What Greg Roman did to design those Ravens offenses worked, and what Todd Monken has done in the last couple of years has also produced tremendous results.
Just 15 years ago, a near-unanimous consensus believed a rushing-first quarterback simply could not work in this league. Before you all start pointing your finger and laughing, here’s the thing: At the time, they were absolutely correct.
Per the old-school rules, attempting to take advantage of a defense’s edge would infinitely harm a smaller ball carrier. Because of the atmosphere, not a single NFL team would even consider replicating Oklahoma’s Wishbone or Nebraska’s power-option concepts.
An NFL team would have placed its quarterback and/or smaller ball carriers in harm’s way. Imagine Buddy Ryan allowing Randall Cunningham to run relentless zone-reads against the Giants. Lawrence Taylor would have ripped his head off cleanly.
It’s different today.
With the physicality lowered, hand-tackling increased (thanks in large part to the alien technology that makes the gloves beyond sticky), and the emphasis on eliminating head contact in full force, the options are limitless.
Jackson’s 915 rushing yards helped put the Ravens in the league’s top rushing spot in 2024. Hurts’s 630 yards did enough to place the Eagles second. Jayden Daniels’s 861 yards contributed to the Washington Commanders’ third-ranked rushing offense.
Is it a mere coincidence that the top-three rushing quarterbacks were a piece of the top-three rushing teams in the league last year? No shot.
We haven’t seen anything close to resembling a ceiling on the quarterback-rush-heavy offense yet.
We have arrived at a modern landscape we call professional football, which features an extremely contrasting game to one our fathers and grandfathers knew. Our sons viewing football two decades from now will look back at this period as the infancy in which not even the surface had been scratched.
This is what Aaron Glenn is thinking.
Imagine the unimaginable
I can’t tell you what will happen with your 2025 New York Jets; I can only explain what I believe your Jets are thinking and envisioning.
Justin Fields leaves a lot to be desired. There’s no running from that fact. Major sacrifices must be made if Glenn has any designs on a Fields-led offense actually working on a high level.
At the same time, what’s truly at stake here is an attempt to further the evolution of the game.
Expect the unexpected. Try to envision the unrealized. Dig deeper for the clearest picture possible.
Yes, the 2025 Jets will feature a plethora of zone reads and RPOs that highlight the best of Fields. Offensive coordinator Tanner Engstrand will mold an offensive scheme around the highly athletic signal-caller.
What is possible to push this mold further? That’s the rub here.
Remember, the NFL carelessly removed the rule that prohibited offensive players from pushing their ball-carrying teammates in 2005. Nearly two decades passed before the Brotherly Shove or Tush-Push came into being.
For years, no coach had pounced upon that rule change in earnest. Players undoubtedly took part and played a bit differently, but wholesale changes were nowhere to be found.
That was until recently.
Nick Sirianni and his coaching staff sort of stumbled upon it in practice. And guess what? Philadelphia does not win its second Super Bowl without it. The weapon is simply that important to what the club does offensively.
What do Glenn and Engstrand have up their sleeves?
Aaron Glenn fits modern thinking
The NFL’s eyes widened when the Miami Dolphins stunned Bill Belichick’s Patriots with the Wildcat in 2008.
Coaches couldn’t believe an east-west, jet-motion concept like that worked in the league. Better yet, they couldn’t believe a rush-only option with an extra blocker worked so well against one of the greatest coaches of all time.
Shortly thereafter, Robert Griffin III, Colin Kaepernick, and even Tim Tebow found some success with college concepts firmly entrenched in the playbook. The NFL has not looked back ever since.
Unless the rules drastically change, the league’s quarterback-rushing ability hasn’t even sniffed the light of day. The old-school heads who are still defiantly opposed can do so as much as they’d like, but fighting results is impossible.
Instead of fitting into one of the stubborn and/or ignorant old-school slots who refuses to change, Aaron Glenn is rolling with the tide. If nothing else, New York Jets fans should realize this is the most promising takeaway.
Again, I’m not here to say the Justin Fields-led Jets will work. Personally speaking, I’m much lower on Fields than the average analyst. He’s rough-to-awful when evaluating many pocket-passing aspects that have traditionally been required.
Yet I’m also not foolish enough to preach doom and gloom from the outset—especially while understanding what’s happening with today’s league.
Yes, this is still football, and it will forever be football, but it’s a much different version than anybody old enough to watch the Rex Ryan Jets remembers experiencing.
With Justin Fields, Aaron Glenn and the New York Jets are banking on this sport changing even more. The only question that remains is, “How will they try to push this evolution forward?”
Stay tuned to Jets X-Factor for potential answers to that very question.
