After a horrific 3-14 debut season, many New York Jets fans are already out on head coach Aaron Glenn.
However, diehard Jets fan and longtime WFAN host Evan Roberts is okay with the Jets giving Glenn a second season.
Speaking with me on “Flight Talk,” Roberts expressed that while he is not bought in on Glenn, he prefers the Jets giving him a second year with a better roster rather than going one-and-done.
“I have no reason to sell anybody positivity on Aaron Glenn, but I have been hesitant to go one-and-done with him. I’ve almost been a minority voice in that regard. And one of my defenses is this: It’s not really a defense of him; it’s more that I think this organization already has an awful reputation,” said Roberts.
“I just wonder what a search would look like after they go one-and-done with Aaron Glenn. I’d almost rather roll the dice of giving Aaron Glenn another year, give him a better roster, give him improvements on the coaching staff, which is on him, and hope. And I know that’s not a great strategy, but I think it’s better than the idea of, let’s go one and done and go through a coaching search in which the Jets are going to be widely considered the least appealing job,” he continued.
The longtime WFAN host pointed to the Jets’ trade-deadline firesale, noting that most one-and-done coaches aren’t forced to navigate a midseason teardown that strips away top defensive talent like such. Roberts also stressed that he wasn’t defending Glenn, only explaining why that context matters when evaluating his first year.
“In the middle of the season, they traded their two best defensive players. Most of these one-and-done examples don’t go through that. They battled. They won some games. By Week 18, I think I know the Jets pretty well — I had no idea who half the guys were. So it’s not that I’m defending him, because I don’t really think I am. I’m more on the side of, all right, I’m not confident, but let’s give him a second year and find out.”
By bringing Glenn back, the Jets are betting on him becoming an outlier. Since 1980, 17 head coaches have started their tenure 0-6 with a new team, and only four later led that same franchise to the playoffs. Since 2000, that number has dropped to just three: Dan Campbell, Zac Taylor, and Kyle Shanahan.
Shanahan is an offensive architect capable of elevating nearly any quarterback. Taylor’s success has been tied almost entirely to Joe Burrow. Campbell, meanwhile, had Jared Goff and surrounded himself with a strong offensive staff, highlighted by Ben Johnson.
For Glenn to follow that path, he would need to be the first defensive-minded head coach of the 21st century to pull it off — a feat that would require hitting on the right quarterback and building a high-level offensive staff around him, much like Campbell did in Detroit.
As Roberts put it, Jets fans are left clinging to hope, once again.
