After becoming a bona fide reality show during the Aaron Rodgers era, the New York Jets sought a “CEO” type head coach who could restore the franchise’s respectability and maturity. They got their man in Aaron Glenn.
Glenn seems to have succeeded in reducing the Jets’ national attention and number of prime-time games. On the field, the result is a league-worst 0-5 record.
During their search for a head coach, New York prioritized Glenn over coaches whose appeal was more based on schematic acumen than leadership. That’s not to say Glenn did not offer appealing schematic acumen after a successful season as Detroit’s defensive coordinator. Still, New York largely steered clear of the “hotshot offensive coordinator” mold, instead focusing on candidates with appealing leadership traits like Glenn and Mike Vrabel.
But as Glenn sits at 0-5, some of the hotshot offensive coordinators from the 2025 hiring cycle are off to excellent starts as head coaches.
One of them saw his team put the league on notice during Monday night’s nationally televised clash. Jaguars head coach Liam Coen, formerly the Buccaneers’ offensive coordinator, knocked off the Chiefs to tie for a league-best 4-1 record, already equaling Jacksonville’s win total from a year ago.
Coen, of “Duuuuu-vaaalllll!” fame, is not the only seemingly “nerdy” former OC who is facilitating progress with his new franchise. Bears head coach (and Adam Gase disciple) Ben Johnson, who spent four years as the Lions’ stone-faced offensive coordinator opposite the fiery Aaron Glenn, has Chicago off to a 2-2 start with a No. 11 ranking in points per game. Former first-overall pick Caleb Williams is trending toward a second-year leap under Johnson.
Coen and Johnson have a combined 6-3 record with teams that went 9-25 last year. Glenn is 0-5 with a team that was 2-3 at this point one year ago.
It’s way too early to label Glenn a failure or Coen and Johnson successes. But as Glenn’s “culture change” continues trending downward, and as Coen and Johnson’s schematic wizardry continues facilitating organizational progress… the Jets’ greatest fear will only grow louder and louder:
Did they screw up by hiring another rah-rah defensive coach instead of a wunderkind offensive mind?
There is a long way to go until we can answer that question definitively. So far, though, it is progressively becoming a prevalent concern.
That doesn’t mean Glenn is incapable of bouncing back.
You don’t need to hire a genius offensive play-caller to be successful in today’s NFL. Head coaches like Dan Campbell, Dan Quinn, DeMeco Ryans, Mike Vrabel, Sean McDermott, John Harbaugh, and Mike Tomlin make that clear.
What you need is a head coach can oversee a prudent strategy, which we discussed in-depth last week.
Coming from a defensive background does not preclude Glenn from accomplishing that goal. His diverse background as a player, scout, assistant coach, and defensive coordinator gives him a unique perspective for a former DC, along with his exposure to forward-thinking offensive-minded coaches like Campbell, Johnson, and Sean Payton.
Through five games, though, Glenn’s team appears lightyears behind where it needs to be in the strategy department. New York is getting thoroughly outcoached on a weekly basis. The players often look unprepared, the defensive schemes are being easily predicted by opposing coordinators, and the offense is not executing basic fundamentals in critical situations.
While coaches like Coen and Johnson might seem less appealing when it comes to podium mantras and locker-room speeches, their backgrounds as highly successful offensive play-callers suggest that they should excel at curbing the things New York is struggling with (game plans, play-calling, adjustments, details in execution, etc.). Defensive-minded head coaches can excel in those areas, too, but offensive coaches have the strategic advantage in today’s offense-driven league; that’s why they are favored in the head coaching cycle each year.
By nature, offensive coaches tend to come off as more low-key personalities than defensive coaches, as defensive play is more energy-driven while offensive play is more tactical and detail-oriented. That’s why defensive coaches often give off appealing energy as leaders of men, whereas the average wunderkind OC can look too stoic or bookish on the sidelines to be a head coach.
This discrepancy in personality types is what causes misevaluations on both sides of the ball. When you hire a defensive coach, there is a risk that you’re being duped by “rah-rah” traits into hiring someone who can’t keep up strategically as an overseer of all three phases. Contrarily, on the offensive side, the strategic appeal tends to overshadow concerns that the coach is not cut out for the job leadership-wise (Mike McDaniel will likely go down as a case of this).
Both sides of the coin present concerns. Only time can tell whether a passionate defensive coach is the next Mike Tomlin or the next Robert Saleh, or whether a quiet offensive coach is the next Andy Reid or the next Adam Gase.
Ultimately, the commonality between successful head coaches is strategic acumen, regardless of whether they come from a background of offense, defense, or special teams. That should be the driving quality teams look for in a head coach; the leadership stuff can take the passenger seat.
Glenn clearly appears fit for the head coaching role as a leader of men. But those skills can only do so much on gameday. When the bullets start flying, the team that comes out on top is usually the one whose coaches put their players in a better position to succeed. The Jets are failing miserably in that area.
The alarming sign is that, based on the Jets’ offseason targets at head coach, it does not seem that owner Woody Johnson has grasped this idea.
Looking back at the Jets’ list of head coaching candidates, it is abundantly clear that they prioritized leadership and experience over strategy. The list is littered with unappealing head coaching retreads, such as Rex Ryan, Matt Nagy, and Ron Rivera, along with a large collection of defensive minds, such as Vance Joseph, Brian Flores, Joe Whitt Jr., Jeff Hafley, and Steve Spagnuolo. They even interviewed college head coach Mike Locksley.
Only three 2024 offensive coordinators were interviewed by the Jets: Bobby Slowik, Matt Nagy, and Arthur Smith. The latter two are head coaching retreads who failed to win a playoff game over seven combined seasons in the role.
Coen and Johnson are nowhere to be found on New York’s list of interviews. Johnson reportedly was uninterested in the Jets’ opening, so you can’t fault the team for that one, but there are no reports that they even requested to interview Coen.
The only candidates on New York’s 16-man list who could be pegged as modern offensive minds were Texans offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik and Vikings quarterbacks coach Josh McCown, neither of whom seemed to be in serious consideration.
Why weren’t there more forward-thinking strategic minds on New York’s interview list? Did they even consider hiring someone who has a feel for the NFL’s tactical zeitgeist in 2025? Or was the only priority to hire someone who could “command a locker room”?
The book on Glenn is far from written. He can still prove that the Jets hired the right guy, someone who checks all of the boxes as both a culture-setter and a strategist. Surely, the Detroit media wasn’t lauding Dan Campbell in those areas after his 0-10-1 start.
And, to be clear, I had Glenn as my No. 1 candidate for the Jets, so I would be lying if I said that I advised the Jets against hiring him because of these concerns. This article is a reaction to the results we have seen thus far, not an “I told you so” column.
However, the concern of hiring yet another defensive-minded coach has always existed. Since the beginning, Glenn has been tasked with proving he can overcome the “defensive-minded” label by overseeing modern strategies on both sides of the football. I personally believed he was capable of it based on his background, and I still think he is.
Now, he’s got to go out there and do it. Until he does, skepticism about whether New York botched another hiring will continue growing.
As the season progresses, Glenn must begin to close the gap that separates his team from the rest of the NFL in terms of categories like game-planning, player preparation, play-calling, and in-game adjustments. If he is unable to do that, New York will have failed by hiring another “culture changer” instead of a coach who knows how to win the chess match in today’s highly tactical league.
The only way to change the culture is to win, and the only way to win is to out-strategize the opponent.