When an NFL team fires a coach, the idea is to find an upgrade.
After all, that’s why any organization would part ways with any employee, right? They believe that whoever replaces said employee will provide a better output in the same role. It’s a simple equation.
So… how do you explain what is going on with the New York Jets?
The Jets fired an OC whom they cannot find a clear upgrade over
On Tuesday, the Jets made the bizarre decision to “part ways” (essentially “fire”, as the parting-of-ways occurred after they tried to strip his play-calling duties) with offensive coordinator Tanner Engstrand.
In his first year as an NFL play-caller, Engstrand did an impressive job of designing pass concepts and getting receivers open, but the final results were ugly due to poor execution from the players.
Despite the obvious discrepancy between Engstrand’s opportunity creation and the roster’s execution, Glenn chose to hold the young coordinator accountable for New York’s final results on offense—despite the fact that Engstrand was Glenn’s handpicked choice to lead the unit.
Surely, to make a move this bold, Glenn must have concocted a scintillating list of potential replacements, right?
After all, while Engstrand was promising in his debut season as an OC, he was far from perfect. It would be a stretch to say he did a “good” job, or that he is a lock to be the next big thing in the NFL. Thus, it is feasible that the Jets could find someone better to run the offense going into a make-or-break season for Glenn.
The Jets’ list of candidates, though, is laughable.
With these five coaches being the options to replace Engstrand, it is clear that Glenn should have just stuck with the coach he chose in the first place.
None of these candidates are an upgrade over Engstrand
Glenn’s five-man list of targets (as officially announced by the team) can be split into two groups: unproven assistants (2) and retreads (3).
Regardless of which direction the Jets go, they are not getting an upgrade over the coordinator they already had.
Unproven assistants: Lunda Wells and Ronald Curry
Lunda Wells, 42, has been the Cowboys’ tight ends coach since 2020. Before that, he was the Giants’ assistant offensive line coach.
Wells has never been close to a play-calling role at any level. He hasn’t even been a pass or run-game coordinator, which is the type of experience that Engstrand had before joining the Jets.
It appears that Wells has done an excellent job as the Cowboys’ tight ends coach, but it would be a major leap for him to move from that role to spearheading an offense for a team with a defensive-minded head coach.
Ronald Curry, 46, has a slightly more appealing resume than Wells as it pertains to potentially leading an offense. He has spent the last two seasons as the Bills’ quarterbacks coach under Joe Brady, and he spent two seasons as the Saints’ passing game coordinator from 2022-23.
Still, if the Jets want a younger, up-and-coming coordinator, why didn’t they just stick with the first-year OC who already showed potential in the role? Wells and Curry would have to go through the same year-one growing pains that Engstrand did. Hiring one of them would do nothing but set the Jets’ offense back a year in its development.
Even at that point, they could only hope that one of these coaches would be as solid as Engstrand at scheming receivers open. Wells is a major gamble to pull it off, given that he has never been involved in coordinating a game plan. Curry has been a little more hands-on, but it’s not as if he hails from as appealing an offensive system as Engstrand did when he came over from the Lions’ juggernaut offense.
When it comes to hiring an unproven OC, the Jets already had a dream candidate. Engstrand checked every box: He spent five years working his way up the ladder with one of the best offenses in the NFL, earning the faith and trust of an elite offensive coach in Ben Johnson. Not to mention, he was a holdover from a previous regime, showing that he earned the respect of a top head coach in Dan Campbell. His pass-game coordinator experience had him just one step away from the OC role.
Engstrand is also a former quarterback with experience as a quarterbacks coach at the college level, which suggests he is cut out for developing QBs.
The Jets had this guy in their building last week. Now, they want to pivot to a tight ends coach or the quarterbacks coach of an already-developed Josh Allen?
It would boggle the mind if the Jets dumped Engstrand to choose a less inspiring coach from the same mold.
Hiring one of the three retreads on their list would be just as confusing, though.
Retreads: Frank Reich, Greg Roman, Darrell Bevell
If one thing can be confidently stated about the Aaron Glenn-led Jets right now, it is that they are probably the most unappealing landing spot in the NFL for a coaching candidate. Their defensive coordinator search made that much clear.
After targeting eight initial candidates for the role, the Jets eventually had to settle for a coach from Glenn’s contact list who was not on the initial list of targets and was hired less than 24 hours after his first virtual interview. While the coach himself (Brian Duker) seems like a solid choice, the hiring process revealed just how unattractive the Jets are to NFL coaches following Glenn’s poor 2025 season and his ensuing onslaught of rash firings.
Top-tier targets like Jonathan Gannon and Christian Parker did not even bother to interview with the Jets. While New York landed an interview with the highly coveted Jim Leonhard (a former Jet), Leonhard stayed un-hired for multiple weeks as the Jets kept searching, and as soon as he had the chance to interview for two much more appealing jobs in Buffalo and Los Angeles, he became a prime candidate for those roles. The Jets pivoted to a less coveted candidate, knowing they had no shot of bringing their former safety home.
It isn’t surprising. Glenn is a 3-14 coach who seems to be an 0-3 start away from getting fired. After an embarrassing debut season, he showed no patience with his own handpicked coaches despite preaching that very word throughout the year. This is a sinking ship that no coach worth his salt would be silly enough to hop aboard.
Only the most desperate coaches would want to take a prominent role with this team. That is evident in their list of retread OC targets.
Frank Reich, Greg Roman, and Darrell Bevell are a who’s-who of has-beens in the OC world. The fact that one of these three coaches is probably going to be running the Jets’ offense in 2026 is nothing short of baffling.
The average NFL fan has heard of these guys, but the reality is that their name recognition stems from success that was achieved multiple geological eras ago in NFL terms. The value of their “experience” is outweighed by the fact that any degree of positive experience was not recent.
There is a reason that the Jets are the only team in the NFL that is currently showing interest in any of these three coaches as an OC candidate.
Frank Reich
Reich’s last two NFL tenures culminated in back-to-back mid-season firings. In 2022, his run as the Colts’ head coach ended after a nine-game stretch in which his team went 3-5-1 and averaged 14.7 points per game. In 2023, the Panthers fired him just 11 games into his first season as the team’s head coach, off to a 1-10 start with 15.7 points per game.
First-overall pick Bryce Young had a historically abysmal start under Reich, averaging a putrid 4.0 net yards per pass attempt in 10 games under Reich’s leadership. That remains the second-worst mark in NFL history by a rookie quarterback through his first 10 starts.
Young was so broken after his rookie year that he was benched after just two games in his second year. Panthers head coach Dave Canales has had to work from the ground up to rebuild Young after he started his career at such a low point. Now in Year 3, Young is starting to inch toward being a competent quarterback after taking some big strides, but the growing pains he developed under Reich are still present.
Since his disastrous run from 2022-23, Reich has been out of the NFL, most recently serving as the interim head coach at Stanford in 2025, going 4-8 (although this was a good record by Stanford’s recent standards).
Reich has some solid accomplishments as a coach, including two playoff appearances over his five years as the Colts’ head coach and a Super Bowl victory as the Eagles’ offensive coordinator in 2017.
However, he hasn’t led an above-average NFL offense (based on DVOA) since 2021, or a top-10 offense since 2020. In terms of quarterback development, the only noticeable positive under his watch was Carson Wentz’s 2017 season with the Eagles, and that was as a non-play-calling OC with Doug Pederson running the show from the head coach spot. His mess with Young washes out a nice season with Wentz that was almost a decade ago.
Now take a step back and realize that many people are pegging Reich as the Jets’ best option out of these five OC candidates.
Yikes.
Greg Roman
Since 2011, Roman has been an OC for four teams across 12 different seasons: the 49ers (2011-14), Bills (2015-16), Ravens (2019-22), and Chargers (2024-25).
Roman is known for his ability to build a run game around the quarterback position. He did it successfully with Colin Kaepernick in San Francisco, Tyrod Taylor in Buffalo, and Lamar Jackson in Baltimore.
Roman has generally been a solid OC in the NFL. From the NFC championship-winning 49ers in 2012 to the 15-win Ravens in 2019, he has contributed to some excellent units.
Recent years, though, have shown that the days of a run-first coach like Roman leading a successful offense in the NFL are long gone.
In 2025, Roman led the Chargers to disappointing ranks of 20th in points per game and 21st in offensive DVOA despite having an excellent quarterback in Justin Herbert and multiple impressive weapons. Injuries to the offensive line didn’t help, but the limitations of Roman’s offense came to a head in the playoffs, when L.A. scored three points in a wild card loss to New England.
Roman had the Chargers ranked a respectable 14th in offensive DVOA in 2024, although it still felt underwhelming for an offense with Herbert at quarterback. This highlights the main concern with Roman: He struggles to maximize quarterbacks in the passing game.
In two years under Roman, Herbert threw for just 230.2 yards per game, a far cry from his 277.8 yards per game in four seasons without Roman. Herbert also saw his sack rate skyrocket from 5.1% before Roman to 8.6% across two years with Roman, while his passing touchdowns per 17 games dropped from 31.3 to 25.2. The veteran run-game builder drew consistent flak for his failure to fully unleash Los Angeles’ strong-armed passer.
Roman spent the 2023 season out of the NFL. Before that, he “resigned” as the Ravens’ OC after a multi-year stint in which Lamar Jackson, like Herbert, saw his passing production decline. While Jackson won his first MVP award under Roman in 2019 (Roman’s first year as OC), the following three seasons (2020-22) still rank as the three worst of Jackson’s career (sans his rookie season) in terms of both passer rating and yards per pass attempt.
In 2023, his first year after Roman’s exit, Jackson won his second MVP award under the leadership of Todd Monken, who found ways to unleash Jackson’s arm in ways that Roman never could. Jackson leaped from 6.9 yards per pass attempt under Roman in 2022 to a career-high 8.0 in 2023. Jackson took another leap in 2024, averaging a career-best 8.8 yards per pass attempt, nearly winning another MVP award.
Is Roman the type of quarterback developer that the Jets should want for their next franchise quarterback? The same guy who has been fired twice in the last four years for failing to maximize two elite-level talents in Jackson and Herbert?
It sure wouldn’t seem like it, but maybe Aaron Glenn knows something that the people up here don’t.
Darrell Bevell
Bevell is an experienced OC who has held the position for four teams across 15 seasons: the Vikings (2006-10), Seahawks (2011-17), Lions (2019-20), and Jaguars.
Like Roman, Bevell has enjoyed plenty of strong seasons in the NFL, whether it was the Vikings’ electric 2009 season with Brett Favre or the Seahawks’ runs to the Super Bowl in 2013 and 2014.
It has been a very long time, though, since Bevell oversaw a quality offense in the NFL.
Bevell’s most recent run as an OC came in 2021 with the Urban Meyer-led Jaguars, who scored the fewest points in the league. Prior to that, his two years in Detroit both saw the Lions rank 19th in offensive DVOA.
The end of Bevell’s run in Seattle was tumultuous, as Russell Wilson and the Seahawks’ offense tumbled from their previous elite heights. After Seattle finished 16th and 15th in offensive DVOA in 2015 and 2016, Bevell was fired, and he spent the 2017 season out of the NFL before returning in 2019 with Detroit, where he continued to struggle.
Simply put, Bevell has not led a strong NFL offense since 2014 in Seattle. That was a long time ago; Patrick Mahomes was 19 years old.
The last four seasons saw Bevell coaching quarterbacks and coordinating the pass game for Miami. The Dolphins had high peaks under head coach Mike McDaniel over this span, although the valleys were low, culminating in McDaniel’s firing.
Once again, we are talking about a name-brand retread who fans recognize because he had success well over a decade ago, but has not done anything to warrant faith in his ability to lead a successful offense in today’s NFL.
Glenn’s self-sabotage
Aaron Glenn did very few things right in his first season as an NFL head coach.
Hiring Tanner Engstrand was one of them.
Yet, for some reason that will likely remain beyond the understanding of outsiders for years to come, Glenn decided to sabotage himself by cutting the cord on one of his rare positive moves.
Engstrand was one of the few silver linings that Jets fans could cling to for any sort of optimism about where the team was headed. While the young OC was imperfect, he showed intriguing potential for a first-year play-caller who had to deal with abysmal quarterbacking and pass-catching. The foundation was in place for the Jets to build a quality offense if they could find a quarterback and some receivers who fit Engstrand’s vision.
For all of Glenn’s faults in 2025, his decision to hire Engstrand had planted the seeds for offensive growth over the long haul… until he abruptly decided to trample on those seeds, seemingly out of paranoia that he needed to take action to save his job.
With the candidates to replace Engstrand being the likes of Wells, Curry, Reich, Roman, and Bevell, it seems likely that the Jets will experience a downgrade at the OC spot in 2026, rendering Glenn’s panic move counterproductive to the goal of saving his job.
If they go the unheralded route with Wells or Curry, the Jets will have to undergo another year of growing pains from a rookie play-caller, with that play-caller likely being worse than Engstrand, given their less appealing resumes.
If they go the retread route, they will be relying on a coach who has not done an impressive job with an NFL offense in at least a half-decade.
Either way, the Jets will be downgrading from Tanner Engstrand.
All for what?
Is it because Glenn thinks he needed a coach who better fits his “vision”? If that’s the case, then why did he hire Engstrand in the first place? Engstrand was his handpicked choice, and Glenn knew him from four years together in Detroit. There should not have been anything surprising about how the relationship worked out.
Is it because Glenn thinks he needs a more “proven” coach to save his job and accelerate the Jets into contention? That would be understandable, but does he realize that the only coaches who would be desperate enough to take this job are those who have been so uninspiring in recent years that nobody else in the league is interested in having them as their OC?
It would be one thing if Glenn knew that dumping Engstrand would lead to a rock-solid veteran OC, but that is not the case here. Glenn dumped a legitimately promising OC just to scrape the bottom of the barrel.
No matter how you slice it, all signs point to the Jets having a panicked, lame-duck coach who does not have the slightest bit of a cohesive plan. Glenn spent a whole season trying to excuse historically poor football by selling the idea that it was all part of a master plan, but after frantically dumping one of his best hires without a surefire upgrade in place, it is clearer than ever that Glenn’s promises of a plan were hogwash all along.
