When digging for reasons to be optimistic about what Aaron Glenn and the New York Jets showed in the 2025 season, the team’s elite special teams unit is easily the most significant positive for Glenn to hang his hat on.
Led by rookie special teams coordinator Chris Banjo, the Jets’ special teams finished with a DVOA of 10.3%, the NFL’s best mark of the 2025 season and its fifth-best mark in history (dating back to 1978).
As tremendous as the unit performed, it may not be as much of a reason for long-term optimism as fans would hope.
Special teams greatness is unsustainable
In many ways, a team’s performance on special teams is random. Unlike offensive and defensive plays, which are heavily scripted and rehearsed, special teams plays are a chaotic mess featuring a group of 11 fringe-roster players that will look much different from season to season. Not to mention, many special teams plays are determined by one man’s individual effort and/or the luck of the bounce.
There is nothing that a coach can do about his kicker’s accuracy, his punter’s precision, his returner’s ability to hold onto the football, or how a ball decides to bounce on a fumble or blocked kick. Yet, these random factors are what determine the excellence of a team’s special teams unit in a given season.
Given its erratic nature, there is very little sustainability in teams’ special teams efficiency from year to year.
In the 2024 season, NFL teams saw their ranking in special teams DVOA fluctuate by an average of 9.8 spots compared to their 2023 placement. Across the five-season span from 2020 to 2024, the average mark was 8.8.
Essentially, during the 2020s decade, the average NFL team’s special teams ranking in one given season has been expected to yield an 18-spot range of where they might land in the following season. They could go nine spots up or nine spots down. For instance, if a team ranked 16th in special teams DVOA over the last five seasons, it meant that they were expected to land anywhere from seventh to 23rd in the following season.
The fluctuation has been even more noticeable for teams that excelled on special teams, as the Jets did in 2025. Since there is little room for improvement, the league’s best special teams units are highly likely to decline. What goes up on special teams must come down; unlike offense and defense, there isn’t enough sustainability in the roster or controllability in the outcomes for teams to maintain excellence from season to season.
In 2024, the top five teams in special teams DVOA were the Lions (5.4%), Steelers (5.3%), Cowboys (4.6%), Broncos (4.4%), and Bears (4.1%). Yet, in 2025, none of those teams ranked top-nine in special teams DVOA. They achieved an average ranking of 15th, with each ranking somewhere from 10th to 18th.
In 2023, the top five teams in special teams DVOA were the Eagles (4.2%), Chargers (4.1%), Ravens (3.2%), Bengals (3.1%), and Jets (3.1%). None of those teams finished top-13 in 2024. Their average ranking was 19th, ranging from 14th to 24th.
In fairness to the 2025 Jets, their special teams performance (10.3% DVOA) was so dominant that it vastly exceeds any of the top special teams units from 2023 to 2024.
This gives the Jets a relatively high floor on special teams in 2026. However, there is still a good chance they will experience a significant dip from the historic peak they reached this season.
Among the top 10 special teams units of all time (excluding the 2025 Jets), their special teams DVOA dipped by an average of 7.0% in the following season, along with an average drop of 8.6 spots in the rankings.
For the Jets, a decline of 7.0% would give them a special teams DVOA of 3.3%, which would still have ranked in the top six in each of the past three seasons. That’s still strong, although it’s a far cry from the dominance that kept the Jets’ entire team afloat in its few wins during the 2025 season.
However, there is a reasonable chance that an even steeper decline could occur. Five of the 10 experienced a drop of more than 8.5%, while three of the 10 fell all the way down to a negative special teams DVOA.
None of the 10 units were able to match or beat their special teams DVOA. However, the 1997 Cowboys (9.4% to 8.8%) and 1986 Saints (9.3% to 8.6%) were able to come close, which inspires hope that Banjo might be able to do the same.
A tall order awaits Chris Banjo
Chris Banjo’s special teams unit likely saved Aaron Glenn from a one-and-done season.
Glenn is still receiving one-and-done chatter as we speak. Although his job is likely safe despite the noise, things could have looked a lot different if the Jets finished winless, or even if they won as few as two games. That would put a different type of pressure on team owner Woody Johnson. But just by getting those three Ws, Glenn seemingly did enough to protect himself in the eyes of ownership and many fans.
However, without Banjo’s special teams unit having one of the best seasons in NFL history, the Jets certainly would have won fewer than three games. If the Jets’ special teams were even just league-average (not even bad), there would have been a very realistic chance of the Jets going winless.
Would Glenn have survived a winless Jets season?
Probably not.
Instead, Glenn will survive into 2026, and Banjo’s special teams unit is essentially the sole reason why. Yet, the unit’s historic excellence is not something that can be trusted as a sustainable asset in the team’s infrastructure moving forward.
It leaves Jets fans in a hopeless position. They’re stuck with a head coach whose survival is predicated upon the production of a unit whose success is unsustainable.
If the randomness of special teams did not fall his way, Glenn would likely be gone, as the Jets’ ownership would see clear as day that it would be justified to cut their losses after one season and start over with a surefire upgrade. After all, this type of blatantly obvious one-and-done firing is what paved the way for the AFC’s top two seeds in 2025, the Denver Broncos and New England Patriots, to find their current head coaches.
The thing is, though, if the Jets were capable of evaluating their situation deeper than surface-level results, they would be able to weed through the noise and see that Glenn was bailed out by special teams luck, which added a few wins to hide the fact that he coached one of the top-three worst teams in NFL history on plays from scrimmage.
The Jets shouldn’t have to see a lower number in the “W” column to justify a change. It should be possible—expected, even—for the Jets’ ownership to evaluate Glenn based solely on factors within his control. They can do it right here, right now—just as we did in this article.
That won’t happen, though. Jets fans are stuck with Glenn because of special teams dominance, and the harrowing part is, they cannot even trust that the special teams unit responsible for saving Glenn’s job will be nearly as good in the future.
Such is life with the New York Jets.
