Through five games, Aaron Glenn’s brand of New York Jets football has been defined by traits like unawareness and unpreparedness.
Simply put, the Jets have not looked like a smart football teamโat all levels of the organization. Whether it’s their roster management, game plans, or the players’ situational awareness, the 2025 Jets have constantly made decisions that defy logic.
That goes for all three phases.
As baffling as the offense and defense have looked, Chris Banjo’s special teams unit is not exempt from the Jets’ collective lack of attention to detail.
In fact, the Jets’ special teams unit is responsible for one of the most blatantly indefensible philosophies displayed by the entire team.
The Jets’ kick return unit doesn’t seem to understand the rules
For many reasons, New York’s kick return unit has been a fiasco.
Two kick returners lost fumbles in games that ended up as one-score losses. Both are off the 53-man roster.
Meanwhile, the team’s intended primary kick returner, Kene Nwangwu, has been sidelined since suffering an injury in Week 1. One of the Jets’ backup options at the position, Braelon Allen, is now on injured reserve.
Due to fumbles and injuries, the Jets have already cycled through a multitude of returners.
The fumbles and injuries aren’t the most indefensible issue, though. Those things happen. What doesn’t have to happen is consistently poor decision-making from the entire unit. The Jets have total control over that, yet they continue screwing up.
No matter who has been back there, New York has frequently made the same baffling mistake: Returning kicks from out of the end zone.
When the NFL moved the kickoff touchback up to the 35-yard line this past offseason, it should have become a no-brainer for returners to down any kick into the end zone (unless their team is in a huge hole and wants to return one for a potential spark).
Returning the ball to the 35-yard line has always been viewed as a significant win for the return team. So, why wouldn’t you accept a free opportunity to get that far? Especially when it also allows you to eliminate any risk of fumbles, penalties, or injuries?
With the new rules, downing a kick in the end zone should be one of the easiest decisions on the football field. The Jets do not seem to understand that.
Through five games, the Jets have already returned four kickoffs that were delivered at least 66 yards (i.e. at least a full yard past the goal line), which ties them for second-most in the NFL. Comparatively, they have only taken two touchbacks.
With this 4:2 ratio, the Jets have returned 66.7% of potential touchbacks, tied for the third-highest rate in the league. The league average is 28.2%, a rate that New York more than doubles.
These decisions have cost the Jets a massive chunk of hidden yardage.
None of the Jets’ four returns out of the end zone reached the 35-yard line. Their average starting field position from those returns was the 22-yard line. That’s an average loss of 13 yards per return, adding up to a league-worst net loss of 52 yards from taking kicks out of the end zone.
In general, fans and media do not direct nearly enough scrutiny at how indefensible this is.
Think about it: Fans would be irate about a 13-yard sack. But sacks are often due to poor execution. Sometimes, a lineman just gets beat; it happens. Other times, the pass concept just doesn’t work, and the quarterback has nowhere to go with the ball. That’s football.
Kick returns are a completely different story. There are no execution-based elements at play. It is a basic “Yes or No” scenario: return the ball or take a touchback? Simple as that.
So, imagine if a team were presented with the choice to avoid a 13-yard sack, and they simply answered “No.”
That’s the equivalent of what we’re seeing from the Jets’ return unit. They are taking weekly sacks that are entirely avoidable by making an elementary decision.
READ MORE: 3 players the NY Jets should trade before the deadlineThe most troubling aspect of this is that it seems to be a coaching issue. New York’s four returns out of the end zone have come from three different returners: Isaiah Davis (twice), Braelon Allen, and Avery Williams.
Considering that the league average return rate out of the end zone is about 28%, it is very unlikely that three different returners would happen to make this decision. Clearly, the Jets’ coaching staff has not drilled down the idea that all kicks into the end zone should be downed.
You can’t even justify it with game context. Three of the four returns were in the first quarter, with one apiece coming from three different returners. The Jets have taken zero touchbacks in the first quarter.
Perhaps the Jets’ logic would be justifiable if league-wide trends suggested that returning kicks out of the end zone had upside, but that’s not the case at all. New York’s lost yardage on those returns is fully expected.
So far this season, the league-average return out of the end zone has come out to the 26.9 yard line. That’s a net loss of more than eight yards compared to taking a knee.
That’s before accounting for penalties. Of the 49 kicks returned out of the end zone, five of them (10%) had a penalty tacked onto the return team.
Overall, just four of 49 returns out of the end zone have set up the return team past the 35-yard line. That’s an 8.2% shot.
8.2%.
Is there any good reason the Jets can provide as to why they think it makes sense to choose an 8.2% chance of reaching the 35-yard line over a 100% chance? If so, I’d love to hear it, even if it’d be provably wrong.
There is a reason NFL teams are kicking touchbacks on just 15.4% of kickoffs this season, a massive decline from 64.3% just one year ago: Touchbacks are a clear-cut loss for the kicking team under the new rules. Returning a kick out of the end zone is to gift-wrap a win for the opponent.
But it’s a far more indefensible form of gift-wrapping than something like dropping a pass or fumbling, because it is a conscious decision that the player has complete control over, free from any opponent pressure or skill-based factors. You are bailing out the opponent for making a costly mistake, and it’s through nothing more than botching a choice as complicated as reading a traffic light.
The Jets have been gift-wrapping wins in the standings for 15 years, though, so it is hardly surprising that they also do it in these micro capacities. It is the accumulation of these little, avoidable blunders that makes the Jets such a consistently bad football team. Occasionally lucking your way into a winning season is not supposed to be hard in the NFL, but when you actively oppose strategies that help you win games, you ensure that a winning season can’t even happen by accident.
So far, the Jets’ new regime has been unable to separate itself from its predecessors when it comes to avoiding inexplicable decisions like this. This is just one of many areas where the Jets’ new regime is many steps behind the rest of the NFL.
Until the Aaron Glenn and Darren Mougey regime can at the very least start catching up to league-wide trends in simple areas like this one, their team will be every bit of the “Same Old Jets.”