Aaron Glenn deserves a hat tip for taking defensive play-calling duties on his shoulders, something that is widely anticipated with the recent hiring of defensive coordinator Brian Duker. When a football coach is facing the world’s wrath, all at once, accepting a responsibility that impactful is admirable.

Whether or not Glenn is a “strategist” is a topic that runs rampant across New York Jets fandom.

While it’s true that Glenn’s strategy bones leave a lot to be desired, flat-out labeling him a “non-strategist” is tough. After all, his play-calling work with the Detroit Lions over four seasons didn’t result in the all-time great Jets cornerback falling on his face.

Glenn does understand modern football. While he also understands modern defensive schemes, understanding is far different from having the versatility to reach the correct endpoint.

Let’s not pretend the Jets hired Aaron Glenn for his schematic wizardry. Even the most ardent Glenn supporter would let that sentiment roll off the tongue, pointing to certain CEO-type skills such as leadership, management, and motivation as strong-suit examples.

After a 3-14 rookie season and a historical coaching turnover, the New York Jets’ sophomore head coach enters the offseason with internal strife. More important than who coaches under him, how much talent is on his roster, and even who plays quarterback, for Aaron Glenn, is the realization that his internal reckoning has arrived, and he must identify the topic…

Conviction vs. conformity — where does the head coach’s mindset fit on that scale? It’s the same topic we discussed in early January of 2025, last year, well before the Jets hired Glenn.

Play-calling is the end result

Jets fans old enough to experience the Herm Edwards era remember screaming Nate Hackett through the TV screen. Whether it was a Chad Pennington check-down or a Curtis Martin draw on third-and-long, fans could not believe how often Hackett was willing to lose the immediate battle.

Why he traveled down that third-and-long submissive road is the real story.

First and foremost, he understood his quarterback’s skill set. As accurate and smart as Pennington was, he didn’t exactly possess a howitzer. Herm’s QB1 struggled outside the numbers in the intermediate area, and everything about him was timing-driven.

More importantly, that’s how Herm wanted it.

In those days, the defensive-first, conservative-led head coach enjoyed better odds at success. It’s just that simple. Defenses could dictate terms more frequently, and playing it safe on offense made logical sense.

It’s much different today. Yet too much of what Glenn has said and put into motion doesn’t align with today’s realities.

While the football world argued about the job Tanner Engstrand did in 2025, few considered what caps were placed upon the offense. From the jump, Glenn preached about having a physical, even violent offense that could rush the ball.

How much freedom did Engstrand even have?

What fans see on Sunday is simply the end result of a long journey that works up to that point.

The mindset begins it all

Look, Glenn can certainly call defensive plays. Anybody thinking otherwise is just lost. He understands modern schemes, and he can draw the X’s and O’s on the whiteboard like the rest.

Here’s the real rub: Just as the head coach always has to be factored into the offensive coordinator’s production, the head coach could do the same to himself when calling plays.

Quite literally, everything the head coach envisions for his football team trickles down throughout the team and the organization. This cannot be understated.

It’s this mindset that sets the tone for the football program. It infiltrates the minds of coaches and players, while setting expectations that bleed onto the football field.

These days, more than ever, some level of conformity is required. While this is true at any point in the sport’s long history, a flexible attitude is more essential when changes come fast and furious.

It’s difficult to argue against the drastic changes this sport has endured in the last 12-15 years. Football has become less physical (in a significant way), with more attention on speed (since less physicality creates greater field-movement predictability via speed), and the rulebook has tilted towards the offense.

Simply put, it’s why we’re watching offensive coordinator nerds dominate the sport. This isn’t to say defensive coaches can’t have success; it’s to argue that they must understand today’s realities, i.e., Mike Vrabel providing Josh McDaniels with freedom, and Mike Macdonald doing the same with Klint Kubiak, while also calling the defense in a modern fashion.

Part of what makes Macdonald effective is his willingness to concede. It’s not that he ever wants to concede on a fourth-and-1, but instead that he feels he has to in certain situations — all with an eye on winning the longer, drawn-out war (not the immediate battle).

Much like Hackett and Herm from a conservative perspective, conceding a fourth-and-1 in nut-cutting time showcases a contrasting approach—one that fits the modern version of the sport, which allows offenses to more easily move the ball in between the 20s.

What has to happen

Guess what? Everything mentioned above concerns a coach’s mindset.

It’s not specifically about schemes, concepts, or play-calls; it begins with the leader of a football team having a firm grasp of what wins in today’s game. The genesis of what’s seen on the field stems from the leader’s understanding of where he needs to live between the extremes labeled “conviction” and “conformity.”

In Detroit, Glenn’s defenses weren’t world-beaters by any means. His 2024 defense marked his best job, by far, as the unit suffered through absurd injuries.

Generally speaking, Glenn played league-high levels of man coverage while sending pressure at the quarterback. Although each of the four years isn’t identical to one another — on the man and blitz percentage front — they come together to tell an indisputable story.

To me, he showed a level of conviction too hot for that roster and team. He called that Lions defense in a way that pointed more to how he envisions defense, and what he prefers as a football man.

That story continued with his signing of quarterback Justin Fields and quarterbacks coach Charles London (two guys who fit his idea of what an offense should be: rush-first) and Steve Wilks (another man-heavy defensive mind). That trend seemingly continued with the mad bomber himself, Wink Martindale (blitz-heavy to the moon), until things fizzled.

Pure conviction, stubbornness, and overwhelming belief simply cannot be the way a football coach operates. Not only does it come off as inauthentic — considering no human could be that confident — but it provides no wiggle-room to alter the initial course the big ship had set.

Through conviction, a semblance of conformity must be present — especially these days. Hopefully, for Jets fans, Glenn clearing out the coaching staff is the very thing that signals his come-to-modern-football-Jesus moment has occurred.

New York Jets head coach Aaron Glenn will never lose his conviction altogether. Let’s just keep it real for a moment.

At the very least, he’d better take his foot off the gas in an extremely light-footed fashion. This is his and the 2026 New York Jets’ only chance to conform to what yields success in today’s National Football League.

It all begins there. Without it, nothing positive is possible.