It’s not Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey”, but the New York Jets’ 2026 offseason has received mostly positive reviews.

With that said, New York’s latest attempt to rebuild the franchise has not been without its share of risky moves (or non-moves) that could come back to haunt them.

Here are the Jets’ three biggest mistakes of the 2026 offseason. To be clear, it is premature to definitively label these as “mistakes” until we see how the results play out, but they can already be argued as mistakes from a process standpoint.

3. Not re-signing Nick Folk and taking a complacent approach to replacing him

Out of nowhere, Nick Folk has emerged as the NFL’s best kicker of the past few seasons. He’s led qualified kickers in field goal percentage in three straight seasons.

The Jets enjoyed the latest of those campaigns, a marvelous 28-of-29 performance that also included a 7-of-8 mark from 50+ yards and a career-long 58-yard field goal. Folk also made all 22 of his extra point attempts and has not missed one since 2023.

Yes, Folk will turn 42 this season, but with this type of production, the Jets should have ridden Folk until the wheels fell off, especially at the price he demanded on the open market. Folk joined the Atlanta Falcons on a two-year, $9 million deal with just $4 million guaranteed.

Of course, we can’t exactly fault the Jets for not signing Folk without knowing how things went down. Perhaps Folk preferred heading south to an indoor stadium over another season in New Jersey.

But after failing to bring back Folk, the Jets should have had a reliable fallback plan. Instead, they are almost certain to experience a downgrade at kicker in 2026.

Cade York and Jason Sanders are set to compete for the Jets’ kicking job. Neither player can compete with Folk’s resume over the last three years. York has made a woeful 73.3% of his career field goal attempts, while Sanders is coming off a hip injury that cost him his entire 2025 season.

Sanders has the upside to be an excellent kicker. A first-team All-Pro in 2020, Sanders has eclipsed a field goal percentage of 90% in three of his seven NFL seasons. However, he also has a low floor, as he has made under 77% of his kicks twice. His 57-yard career-long is also a yard shy of Folk’s despite Sanders only being 30 years old.

The Jets took an unnecessarily risky approach at a position that often determines the outcome of close games.

2. Doing nothing at center

We’ve discussed the Jets’ center controversy ad nauseam over the last few days, sparked by the emergence of Ethan Pocic on the free agent market (who has since signed with the Baltimore Ravens).

To summarize, though, the Jets have not added a single player at one of their worst offensive positions from a year ago. They have displayed baffling complacency at a position where they entered the offseason with immense room to grow.

The Jets’ 2025 starting center, Josh Myers, ranked in the bottom three among starting centers in total pressures allowed, total penalties, and overall Pro Football Focus grade. As a result, the Jets should have viewed his starting spot as a must-upgrade position. Instead, they seem content to give him another year.

Making the complacency more troubling is the Jets’ lack of a sufficient backup. If the Jets played a game today, Xavier Newman would be the next man up behind Myers. Newman has played 36 NFL snaps at center, all coming in a game against the Giants back in 2023, when he allowed five pressures in relief.

New York entered the 2026 offseason with one of the league’s worst projected starting centers and one of the league’s worst projected backup centers. Yet, with training camp less than 10 days away, they have yet to add a single center.

No reserve/future contracts.

No undrafted free agents.

No Day 3 picks.

Nobody.

As a franchise that has been hamstrung by its offensive ineptitude for decades, if not an entire half-century, the Jets should be looking for every possible avenue to make their offense as talented as possible. Outside of quarterback and wide receiver, center was the offensive position with the third-most room for improvement this offseason.

Doing nothing is inexcusable.

1. Retaining Aaron Glenn

As a franchise, you never want to be in a position where your fans are split nearly 50-50 between wanting your team to make the playoffs and wanting you to lose as much as possible.

Keeping Aaron Glenn is the main reason the Jets find themselves in that position. His continued presence in Florham Park has caused Jets fans to become divided on whether they want to see the team push for a wild card spot or have another tanking season.

Because of Glenn, there is a segment of Jets fans who are deathly afraid of the Jets having a “fake” improved season—one that does just enough to convince Woody Johnson to bring Glenn back for a third season despite Glenn doing little that proves he can eventually lead the Jets to a Super Bowl.

Those fans are justified in their fear. We just saw this scenario play out a few years ago.

Back in 2019, Adam Gase oversaw one of the ugliest first halves in Jets history. The team was 1-7 and suffering embarrassing losses left and right. At the time, they were the first team in Jets history to reach the eight-game mark with fewer than two wins and a point differential below -100 (Gase replicated the feat one year later).

Considering that Gase was already a maligned hire after his unsuccessful three-year run in Miami, which ended with his stock in the gutter, it was already obvious by halfway through the 2019 season that Gase was a lost cause. Short of running the table, there was nothing he could do to salvage his reputation, especially since the poor start also involved a sophomore slump from Sam Darnold, the man Gase was hired to develop.

Yet, the Jets “surged” to a 6-2 finish, leaving them with a 7-9 record that represented a three-win improvement over the 2018 season. It was enough for Gase to earn another shot in 2020… and Jets fans know how that season panned out.

But if the Jets evaluated the season in totality instead of gazing at the win-loss record, it would have been clear that Gase should have been gone. The Jets’ second-half victories were mostly in ugly fashion against bad teams. Their final victory was even against a Bills team resting its starters, and the Jets still won by only a touchdown.

After that experience, many Jets fans understandably don’t want to see the team put together another faux 7 or 8-win season that doesn’t move the long-term needle and leaves them with a lame-duck coach.

Here’s the kicker, though (and it’s not Nick Folk): the fact that we are already having this conversation is all the evidence we need that Glenn probably should have been shown the door after the 2025 season.

When you’ve stooped this low, it’s already over. Almost no coach can come back from this.

If Glenn goes on to succeed, he will be an all-time outlier in NFL history. The only defensive-minded head coach since 1980 to rebound from an 0-7 start to his tenure and eventually lead the same franchise to the playoffs was Jimmy Johnson, and that was 37 years ago.

After starting 0-7 before the Jets traded away their superstar defenders and finishing with a 3-14 record that included an utterly embarrassing -203 point differential, Glenn showed enough evidence that he is probably not “the guy”. The Jets would have been justified to clean house after one year.

Instead, they not only kept Glenn, but also let him rebuild his entire staff.

If you’re willing to go that far… why not cut off the head of the snake and just get a new snake altogether? Especially considering that the new staff is to be built by the same coach who hired the staff that was poor enough to be dumped after a single season?

Not to mention, Glenn’s job won’t be any easier this season. In addition to his existing responsibilities, he will also take on defensive play-calling. For a coach who already looked in over his head—so much so that he struggled to calculate field goal distances in real time—adding play-calling responsibilities will not exactly lighten the load and allow him to settle in.

For the Jets’ sake, it would be best if Glenn defies the odds, has a tremendous 2026 season, and goes on to become the head coach that they, and many people (myself included), thought he could be when he was hired. It sure seems unlikely based on what we have seen, but that would be the smoothest outcome. That’s why Jets fans would be wise to consider rooting for a high-quality eight-to-nine-win season before they throw in the towel and go full tank mode. At this point, Glenn should get a shot first.

But given what history shows about how low Glenn’s odds of becoming a successful head coach really are, the Jets have left themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place by choosing to retain him. It’s a much messier position than they would have been in if they had just cut their losses.

If Glenn bombs again, they will have wasted a season that could have been used by a better coach if they had admitted their mistake earlier. Maybe a different coach would have gotten more out of the team. At the very least, he could have used the season to establish his culture and system before the Jets likely welcome a rookie quarterback in 2027.

Perhaps you could argue, though, that the Jets’ job will be more attractive in this scenario than it would have been in 2026, as Glenn will have been given two years (as opposed to the bad look of a one-and-done year) and the team will have three first-round picks, likely yielding a promising quarterback from a strong draft class. That’s a fair argument.

But the Jets could just as easily be the lowest job on the totem pole, because at the point of a 16th straight non-playoff season and another respected coach failing in the head role, no high-ranking candidate would be itching to come coach for the Jets, regardless of their assets (unless they land the first pick and one of the QB prospects is considered “can’t-miss”). It is just as feasible that waiting to have a second poor season under Glenn will just go down as another wasted year rather than the path to a better coaching hire.

If Glenn leads a mediocre season with an improved win total but little evidence that he is a great coach, ownership will likely retain him based solely on win-loss record, ignoring the obvious red flags and prolonging the inevitable for yet another year. That would leave Jets fans feeling as if they are in purgatory. Glenn would be the head coach tasked with setting the foundation for a prized QB in 2027, despite being a lame duck, which feels like a repeat of the Todd Bowles/Sam Darnold situation in 2018.

The Jets’ only positive path forward out of the 2026 season is the scenario that seems least likely: a high-quality output of eight-plus wins, featuring noticeably improved coaching from Glenn, impressive wins over good teams, blowout wins over bad teams, competitiveness in defeat, significant development from young talent, and positive returns on the rebuilt coaching staff.

Will Glenn make all of those things happen after what we saw in 2025?

The Jets had better hope so, or they may rue not making a head coaching change sooner.