The New York Jets defeated the Cleveland Browns 27-20 for their second consecutive victory. Despite the feel-good momentum, not everything is trending up for the 2-7 Jets.

The Jets’ latest triumph can be attributed almost entirely to their special teams, which scored two touchdowns. It was no thanks at all to their offense, which scored fewer points (13) than the special teams (14) and only picked up 169 yards.

Within the offense, the run game was solid, collecting 127 yards against a top-notch Browns run defense. However, the pass game was abhorrent, recording 42 yards. Outside of a 42-yard screen pass for a touchdown, the Jets had zero passing yards.

It was a pathetic showing, and far from the first led by quarterback Justin Fields. Despite the win, Fields continued building what is quickly becoming one of the worst runs by a starting quarterback in the post-passing-boom era of NFL football.

Justin Fields did something we haven’t seen since 1973

Fields finished New York’s win completing 6-of-11 passes for 54 yards, one touchdown, and one interception, while taking three sacks for 12 yards. He rushed seven times for 28 yards.

While the lack of attempts played a role in Fields’ cumulative output, it does not excuse his brutal efficiency on a per-play basis. Fields netted 42 yards on 14 plays, an average of 3.0 net yards per pass attempt, which is less than half of the NFL average (6.1). If you remove his 42-yard screen pass to Breece Hall, Fields netted zero yards on 13 plays.

For most other NFL franchises, a quarterback performance like this would go down in the annals as one of the ugliest displays the fanbase has ever been forced to watch. For Fields and the Jets, this is just another day at the office.

Sunday marked Fields’ fourth performance of the season with under 60 passing yards. He is the first quarterback to have four starts with under 60 passing yards within his team’s first nine games of a season since 1973, when Bills rookie Joe Ferguson achieved the feat.

Before Fields, it hadn’t even been done three times within a team’s first nine games since Jim Harbaugh in 1998.

Altogether, Fields has recorded just 1,143 passing yards across his eight starts as a Jet. That’s the fewest passing yards through eight starts by an opening-week starting quarterback since JaMarcus Russell threw for 1,000 yards within his first eight starts of the 2009 season, culminating in his benching and the end of his NFL career.

If the Jets are planning to tank for the first overall pick, Fields is an excellent option moving forward.

Clearly, though, based on the team’s back-to-back spirited efforts, tanking is not in the cards for New York. In the NFL, tanking is never on the table for the coaches and players on the field, even if the front office’s trades may be somewhat intended to nudge the team in that direction.

Glenn and the Jets are focused on winning games—and they’re finally figuring out how to do it.

If they want to continue doing so across the next eight games, they’ll bench Fields.

Benching Fields is the right move for the present and future

The Jets did not suddenly become a juggernaut overnight. Their last two wins came by a combined eight points against teams with a combined 5-13 record. This is not a sustainable formula for winning games moving forward.

It’s a positive that New York is learning how to come up on the right side of the one-score games they frequently squandered through seven games, but to win games consistently in the NFL, teams must give themselves a buffer that allows them to come on top even when things don’t go perfectly. The coaching staff’s job is to continually seek ways to create those buffers, even if the team has been winning games recently.

The Jets aren’t going to face the Cincinnati Bengals’ historically embarrassing defense every week. They are also not going to score two return touchdowns every week.

If the coaching staff thinks the team has turned a corner, they’re dead wrong. They must avoid complacency and remain focused on finding ways to improve.

There’s no area where the Jets must improve more than the pass game.

To win games on a sustainable basis in today’s NFL, you need quality production through the air. If the Jets’ passing game doesn’t pick things up, they won’t win many more games over the rest of the season. There is little about Sunday’s win that changes their outlook for the next eight games, especially going into Thursday’s clash with a red-hot Patriots team.

It would be irrational of Glenn and the Jets to pretend that everything is peachy and changes are unnecessary just because there are finally some “Ws” on their schedule. Every aspect of the depth chart should remain subject to evaluation and ensuing changes on a weekly basis, regardless of the final result.

The next change that must be made? Benching Fields.

Time for Tyrod to be the guy

While veteran backup Tyrod Taylor has not thrived in his limited action this season, we are well past the point where Taylor can be considered any worse of an option than Fields. He has reached the depths of comparisons to JaMarcus Russell. There is only room for improvement with Taylor under center instead of Fields.

Taylor is the Jets’ best bet to win games in the short term, which is Glenn’s priority. That alone should be enough to push Glenn into making the switch. Even more importantly, though, Taylor is a better option to facilitate the Jets’ long-term goals.

The Jets have a plethora of young receivers whose ball skills must be evaluated before the offseason. Fourth-round rookie Arian Smith has still seen only 10 targets this season after getting none across 33 offensive snaps against Cleveland. Recent trade pickup John Metchie debuted against the Browns, but saw just one target on a short pass. The tantalizing Adonai Mitchell is projected to make his debut against New England.

These receivers cannot be evaluated with Fields under center. Not only do the Jets hardly trust Fields to throw the ball whatsoever, but even when he does throw, Fields is terrified of throwing downfield. Fields threw two passes over 10 air yards against the Browns. Think about that: Two downfield passes in four quarters!

On the year, Fields has thrown an NFL-high 56.7% of his passes between zero and nine yards downfield. That’s not a bad stat in a vacuum, as quarterbacks like Justin Herbert and Daniel Jones are in the top 10, but it works for those quarterbacks because they keep defenses honest with downfield success. That leaves them with ample room to cook in the underneath area.

Fields, on the other hand, checks the ball down against defenses that are begging him to do just that, since they have no fear of him beating them over the top. The result is that Fields has gone eight straight games of mainly throwing sub-five-yard dump-offs, leading to his historically poor yardage numbers.

Smith, Metchie, and Mitchell are wideouts with promising separation metrics but shaky track records at the catch point. If the Jets have a quarterback who refuses to throw downfield, these receivers won’t get the reps they need to show where they stand in their development.

Taylor can at least be trusted to give plenty of chances to the Jets’ young pass catchers. The veteran has been aggressive during his short time on the field this year; his ADOT (average depth of target) is 9.1 yards, ranking ninth-highest out of 41 qualified quarterbacks. Fields’ ADOT is 7.0, the sixth-lowest.

Fields has thrown just 14 deep passes (20+ air yards) across his 228 dropbacks. On just 91 dropbacks, Taylor has thrown 10 deep passes. That’s a difference of one deep pass every 16.3 dropbacks compared to one deep pass every 9.1 dropbacks.

Taylor will provide the Jets’ front office with valuable intel on its young prospects that it would not receive with Fields at quarterback. That is a significant long-term benefit to putting him under center for the second half of the season.

On top of helping them evaluate their receivers, there is one more reason that having a more aggressive quarterback over the next eight games is vital to the Jets’ future: It can help them establish their new offensive-minded vision.

The Jets need to start planting the seeds of an offense-first culture

Trading Sauce Gardner and Quinnen Williams signaled that the Jets are refocusing their long-term vision to the offensive side of the ball.

When you lack a franchise quarterback, you do not trade two defensive All-Pros in their prime to hopefully replace them with more defensive All-Pros. You do it to put all your chips in on finding a star quarterback and building an elite offense around him.

Glenn was a part of the Detroit Lions’ turnaround under Dan Campbell. He should know from firsthand experience that the offense is what must spearhead an organizational turnaround in today’s NFL, not the defense or special teams.

When the Lions roared to a 3-3 finish in Campbell’s debut season after an 0-10-1 start, their scoring improved by 9.3 points per game over the final six games, whereas they actually allowed 3.4 more points per game than they did over their first 11 games.

The following year, when the Lions went 9-8, announcing they were on the precipice of greatness, it was once again the offense that led the charge. The 2022 Lions were fifth in scoring (26.5 points per game) and 28th in preventing points (25.1 points per game). That same year, the Jets had a similarly promising year in the opposite fashion, ranking fourth-best defensively and 29th offensively. Yet, the Jets’ output led to a 7-10 finish, including a loss at the Lions’ hands. New York’s ensuing seasons yielded nothing but regression, while the Lions kept climbing.

Perhaps it may be difficult for Glenn to admit that Detroit’s offense carried the franchise to success, as he was the one responsible for leading a defensive unit that didn’t show signs of excellence until Campbell’s fourth season. Now that Glenn is a head coach, though, his defensive-minded days must be put in the rearview. Offense wins championships. Jets general manager Darren Mougey understands this, as evidenced by his deadline deals. Does Glenn agree with that mindset?

If he does, he will bench Fields for Taylor as soon as possible, helping his franchise plant seeds of an offense-first culture that will anchor the team in the future.

With Taylor at quarterback, the Jets have a better chance of racking up points over the final eight games, establishing the organizational mindset that the New York Jets are finally committed to playing modern NFL football in the coming years. The Jets won’t suddenly become an elite offense with Taylor, but his ability to throw the ball (to any degree of competence) will allow the Jets’ young players to start acclimating to the philosophy that will anchor the team for years to come.

If Glenn does not agree with that mindset, still adhering to outdated defense-first adages, he will stick with Fields because he “protects the ball,” “establishes the run game,” and “did what he needed to do to win the last two games.”

It’s nice that the Jets have picked up a couple of wins, but moments like this are where Glenn’s mettle as a head coach will truly be tested over these final eight games. His ability to handle these types of decisions will tell us a lot more about his coaching chops than beating the Browns on a couple of kick returns. In the long run, these are the turning-point choices where Glenn’s approach will directly impact the team’s on-field success. Kene Nwangwu and Isaiah Williams’ kick returns do little to raise Glenn’s stock.

Benching Fields for Taylor would send an extremely promising message about Glenn’s future. It would show that he won’t settle for ugly wins over bad teams and remains endlessly unsatisfied in his mission to maximize the team’s odds of winning each week.

Fields doesn’t need to spend any more time on the field for the Jets in 2025. His chances of becoming a franchise quarterback are gone, and he is not a reliable option for winning games in the short term. Taylor is their best short-term option for winning games, and if Taylor gets hurt or underperforms, the Jets will turn to Brady Cook, who is at least young enough to have the hypothetical upside that Fields no longer possesses.

The Jets have young receivers to evaluate and an offense-first mindset to establish. These are the goals they must focus on, and their recent win didn’t move the needle in either department.

If Glenn doesn’t bench Fields soon, it will give off a sense of incongruency between the visions of the front office and the coaching staff.

Mougey’s deadline deals are intended to be the anchors of a long-term build toward becoming one of the NFL’s offensive juggernauts. Glenn still seems focused on “the W [being] all that matters,” per his words to the media on Monday. In his mind, he does not care about angering “fantasy players” on the path to winning.

Brushing off a performance of 3.0 net yards per attempt as if it is something that only “fantasy players” should care about is laughable. Maybe Glenn’s point is that he didn’t need to rack up passing attempts to boost Fields’ cumulative stats, but Fields’ volume of attempts does not change how inefficient he was when he did throw, and how his poor efficiency discourages the Jets from throwing the ball more often.

These types of comments are concerning, as they indicate Glenn is still behind the times when it comes to his mindset toward winning games.

Sure, the Jets won, but it had nothing to do with Fields. Not everything that happens in a victory is automatically good. He’s played better in games where they lost. It’s not as if he played poorly against the Steelers in Week 1; the defense and special teams caused that loss, the opposite of Sunday’s game against Cleveland. The players and the final result should be evaluated independently.

Fields’ performance against Cleveland vastly reduced the team’s chances of victory. They overcame it because the rest of the team played so well, but if Fields were even just mediocre, perhaps the Jets would have won by 21 instead of seven. Glenn’s comments suggest that he is concerned with doing “just enough” to win, rather than striving to win by as many points as possible.

The Jets’ mentality after Sunday’s win should be that they are thankful things broke their way, but incredibly unsatisfied with the offensive performance. They should confront the reality that the offense must improve significantly, not just because it’s hurting their chances of winning games in the short term, but also because their offensive consistency is (or should be) their primary focus in the long-term organizational plan.

Is Glenn’s mindset aligned with Mougey’s in pursuit of offensive greatness? Or is Glenn the wrong coach to execute the plan Mougey set in motion?

Glenn’s quarterback decision against New England will tell us a lot.