Nobody had high expectations for the New York Jets entering the 2025 season. Fans and prognosticators alike believed the team would struggle to win many games in the first year of a completely revamped regime.
That doesn’t mean the franchise deserves a free pass for any degree of ineptitude.
Despite the low expectations, there remains a bar that New York is expected to clear. It’s a low, low bar.
Yet, they are nowhere close to clearing it.
Optimism without basis is delusion
Be competitive.
Play the right way.
Establish discipline.
Show weekly progress.
Build a foundation for sustained success.
Give fans a product they can be proud of.
These are just a few of the goals that were established for New York before the 2025 season kicked off, whether through the lenses of realistic fans or Aaron Glenn himself.
There is a way for the Jets to have a successful 2025 season despite losing a plethora of games. That would entail checking the aforementioned boxes, even if the team struggles to come up on the right end of the final score.
For one week, New York was on the right track. In their season-opening loss to Pittsburgh, the Jets seemed to be checking many of those boxes even if the result was an “L.”
Over the four games since, the Jets have been nowhere close to clearing the low bar established for them.
Sure, two of the four games resulted in those sweet, sweet “one-score losses” that losing teams love to champion (“We were just one play away from winning!”). But the final scores of those supposedly close games—a 27-29 loss at Tampa Bay and a 21-27 defeat in Miami—could hardly be more misleading.
The Jets spent most of the second half against Tampa Bay in garbage time mode. Only when Will McDonald went full Thanos, blocking a field goal and returning it himself for a touchdown, did it feel like New York had a remote chance of winning. Even then, they blew their advantage as quickly as they stole it.
The following week against Miami, the Jets spent nearly the entire game getting outplayed by an otherwise winless Dolphins team, even with Miami losing its best player (Tyreek Hill) midway through. A garbage time touchdown drive made the score look close, but the Jets were never realistically in that ballgame after halftime.
To best encapsulate the Jets’ ineptitude over the past four games, we should look at their win probability flow charts.
These charts provide a more accurate visualization of a team’s general competitiveness throughout a game than the final score or stats. This is because they depict the feel of the game at every moment from start to finish.
And when you chain the Jets’ last four win probability charts together, you see the reality: The Jets have essentially gone four straight games without it ever feeling like they had a real chance of winning (save for one heroic moment).
Besides a momentary revival in Tampa, the Jets have spent the last four games dying slow, painful deaths up until halftime, with the heart monitor already flattened by midway through the third quarter.
Aaron Glenn should be utterly embarrassed about that image. It perfectly sums up the Jets Fan Experience™: Slogging through 60 minutes of football despite knowing your team is snowballing from the very start and never has an actual chance—save for those rare moments where they stage a faux comeback just to keep you from changing the channel.
Outside of McDonald’s blocked field goal and the couple of plays that followed it, the Jets have never had a win probability above 25% at any point over the last four second halves.
Over the last four fourth quarters, the Jets’ win probability has never gone above 10% (again, save for the immediate aftermath of McDonald’s touchdown, which the Jets allowed to evaporate almost instantaneously).
Simply put, the Jets aren’t meeting expectations, which is saying quite a bit considering how low those expectations are.
Let’s take a second to appreciate just how awful this team is playing.
The Jets are the only winless team in football through five weeks. They are the first team in NFL history to start 0-5 with no takeaways. Glenn is the first Jets head coach in franchise history to start 0-5.
The Jets’ SRS (Simple Rating System), a metric that combines point differential with strength of schedule, is -11.2; not only is it on pace to finish as the third-worst mark in franchise history, but it is only marginally better than Adam Gase’s 2020 team (-11.5) despite the Jets’ roster having significantly more talent than that team.
This is inexcusable.
The word “inexcusable” gets thrown around quite frequently in sports, but it’s wildly overused, since the crimes described as “inexcusable” are usually excused.
Should these crimes be excused, though?
Perhaps not.
Yes, it is still very early. Glenn and general manager Darren Mougey have 12 games for their reputations to be salvaged. If they can meet the Jets’ pre-season expectations over the upcoming 12-game body of work, these first five games can be shoved in the closet and forgotten about, like that T-ball participation trophy I didn’t deserve for my weak defense on the 2005 Marlboro Youth Baseball Red Sox.
Anyone calling for Glenn and Mougey to be fired tomorrow is getting way too far ahead of themselves, just like five-year-old me when I didn’t understand that you had to hit the ball off the tee before running to first base.
It’s too early to call for heads to roll. But is it too early to say that if the Jets continue on their current trajectory, heads might roll in January?
Not at all.
One-and-done scenarios have happened many times in recent NFL history. Jerod Mayo (2024 Patriots), Antonio Pierce (2024 Raiders), Frank Reich (2023 Panthers), Nathaniel Hackett (2022 Broncos), Lovie Smith (2022 Texans), David Culley (2021 Texans), Urban Meyer (2021 Jaguars), Freddie Kitchens (2019 Browns), and the Jets’ current defensive coordinator, Steve Wilks (2018 Cardinals), have all been relieved from their duties as head coaches before reaching their second seasons.
As premature as it may seem to dump Glenn and/or Mougey after one season, it would only happen because they failed to reach the goals they set for themselves.
Remember, these were Aaron Glenn’s words on Tuesday, September 2, days ahead of the season opener:
“What would define a successful season? I want to be a team to where the fans will look up and say, ‘We’re proud of that team.’ And if they say that, I’ll be happy. I’ll be happy, because within that, I know that wins will come.”
Are Jets fans proud of this team right now?
Have they been proud at any moment since Week 1?
If Week 18 arrives and Jets fans still aren’t proud of the team, Woody Johnson should seriously ponder whether it makes sense to give this regime a free pass into 2026 simply because “it’s only one year.” Patience is one thing, but optimism without basis is pure delusion.
So far, the Glenn-Mougey regime has not provided fans with any legitimate reasons to be optimistic about their qualifications for leading the franchise into the future. If they don’t start giving fans some reasons to believe over the next 12 games, we cannot rule out the possibility of this being a one-and-done scenario.
Glenn’s promises of a revamped on-field play style have rung hollow. The Jets are as undisciplined (fifth-most penalties in the NFL) and uninspired (team captain Jamien Sherwood was jogging behind potential touchdowns in the first half) as ever.
Mougey is already beginning to look in over his head as a talent evaluator. These were the largest investments of his first free agency period:
- LB Jamien Sherwood: 3 years, $45M
- CB Brandon Stephens: 3 years, $36M
- QB Justin Fields: 2 years, $40M
- S Andre Cisco: 1 year, $8M
Sherwood has regressed into one of the league’s worst starting linebackers. Stephens is overpaid at best as a CB2. Fields’ contract felt pricey at the time for his career track record, and he has yet to do anything to justify the overpay. Cisco is one of the worst starting safeties in the league.
On top of his free agency woes, Mougey and his pro scouts seemingly have no clue how to scout returners. They kept Xavier Gipson on the roster (a decision Glenn may have contributed to, which still reflects poorly on the regime as a whole) and replaced him with an even worse option in Isaiah Williams.
Let’s not even start going down the rabbit hole of how Mougey completely ignored upgrading the Jets’ blocking capabilities at tight end despite knowing his offensive coordinator wanted to deploy a run-first, 12-personnel-heavy offense.
Or, how Mougey did not make a single move to address an edge unit that severely lacked depth, instead opting to complacently roll with the abysmal Micheal Clemons (another move that may have been Glenn-influenced, but, again, it only further reflects the regime’s overall incompetence as a collective group).
While Mougey seems to have nailed his first draft pick, Armand Membou, the rest of his class is struggling to make an impact so far. It’s too early to judge a draft class, though, so we’ll cut him slack in this regard.
But Mougey and Glenn are tied at the hip. In fact, Mougey was Glenn’s handpicked choice. Glenn is the one in charge here. Ultimately, every roster decision falls on him. This entire regime is working as one, with Glenn as the head of the snake.
When the result is the worst start for a head coach in Jets history (a very difficult bar to clear), it delivers a blaring message to Jets fans: It is officially time to start wondering whether this regime is built to last.
And, just so we’re not misconstruing anything, make sure you re-read that sentence. It does not say, “It is time to fire Aaron Glenn and Darren Mougey.” It merely states that it is time to “start wondering” whether they are the right guys to save the New York Jets. That’s all.
As recently as two weeks ago, it was much too early to have serious long-term conversations about Glenn and Mougey’s job statuses. But as the low-quality losses stockpile, we have reached the point where it is fair to begin pondering what might happen if New York continues producing the same results over the next 12 games.
Let’s revisit that list of one-and-done head coaches since 2018. Alongside each coach, I will list their team’s SRS (Simple Rating System) from that season; as a reminder, this metric adjusts a team’s average point differential for strength of schedule. Remember, the 2025 Jets currently have an SRS of -11.2.
- Jerod Mayo (2024 Patriots): -8.1
- Antonio Pierce (2024 Raiders): -6.4
- Frank Reich (2023 Panthers): -9.9
- Nathaniel Hackett (2022 Broncos): -5.0
- Lovie Smith (2022 Texans): -8.5
- David Culley (2021 Texans): -9.7
- Urban Meyer (2021 Jaguars): -11.4
- Freddie Kitchens (2019 Browns): -1.9
- Steve Wilks (2018 Cardinals): -11.5
Based on SRS, the 2025 Jets are currently worse than all but two of the nine teams with a one-and-done head coach since 2018. Ironically, their current defensive coordinator coached one of those teams. The other was coached by Urban Meyer, potentially the worst head coach in NFL history.
That is the type of trajectory Glenn is on.
And if he stays on that course through 17 games, the Jets shouldn’t waste another season praying for a miraculous turnaround from a coach in Urban Meyer territory.
That’s a long way out, though. Let’s see what happens over the next 12 games.
I’ll never backtrack on it: Aaron Glenn was my No. 1 candidate for the Jets in this year’s head coaching cycle. I thought he was the right guy, and I still believe in his potential to turn things around.
The results are the results, though, and these results stink. We have to call it for what it is, no matter how fun of a story it would be if Glenn were the guy to save the franchise.
The honeymoon phase is over. Like a newlywed couple stuck overnight sleeping on a cold, metallic bench at Chicago O’Hare outside of the Auntie Anne’s after a 10-hour flight from Milan during which the guy in the window seat got up to use the bathroom precisely 16 times, Glenn is in the process of transitioning from fantasyland to the realities of the cruel world.
There’s some kind of pun that could go here to connect the airport metaphor to the Jets, but like Steve Wilks choosing a third down play call, I couldn’t think of anything good. So, to leave this off, I’ll just drop Glenn’s September 2 quote one more time.
“What would define a successful season? I want to be a team to where the fans will look up and say, ‘We’re proud of that team.’ And if they say that, I’ll be happy. I’ll be happy, because within that, I know that wins will come.”
Twelve games remain to reach that bar.
