Well, it was a good ride.
Eh, not really.
For all intents and purposes, the New York Jets’ utterly abysmal 28-25 loss to the Miami Dolphins brought an end to the Aaron Glenn era in Florham Park. Barring a miracle, the question is now “when”, not “if”, the Jets will begin their search for the 20th man to don their headset since Super Bowl III winner Weeb Ewbank coached his last game in 1973.
There’s no coming back from this one for Glenn, unless he has a turnaround of unprecedented proportions brewing. Any and all excuses have flown out the window and been squashed by the cars trailing behind.
Glenn’s body of work is becoming increasingly grotesque. With a loss at home to an 0-5 division rival—mind you, a team that intentionally gutted its roster in the offseason (a professional way of saying “tanking”)—the Jets are now 5-19 under Glenn, including 0-8 in the AFC East. Their home field has become a playground for opposing teams, as the Jets are now 3-9 at MetLife Stadium while allowing 25.6 points per game.
The head coach’s fingerprints were all over this loss, marking yet another defeat in which the Jets played competitively enough to have a shot until the end, but had their coaching staff blatantly represent the narrow margin between winning and losing.
The Jets never even held a lead in the game. They were so thoroughly outperformed and outcoached in the first half that they were booed off the field at halftime, and justifiably so. Glenn coached up a stinker sundae.
The Dolphins’ offense, which entered the afternoon averaging 14 points per game, had 21 points by the break. It often had just as much to do with coaching as player execution, as offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik constantly schemed up wide-open answers against Aaron Glenn’s blitzes, seemingly knowing exactly what to expect at every given moment.
On top of being out-schemed, Glenn, ever the innovator, somehow invented another brand-new way to squander the end of a half.
With the Dolphins driving deep into Jets territory with under two minutes left and New York still having three timeouts, Glenn chose to use none of them, allowing the Dolphins to both score a touchdown and run the clock out, giving the Jets no shot at an extra possession before halftime. The Jets walked into the locker room with three timeouts and a 14-point deficit.
Coming out of the break to a stadium that was maybe half-filled (at most) with frustrated fans, Glenn gave an interview in which he joked about his infamous Week 6 post-halftime interview, when he seemingly did not know which team had the ball coming out of the half. That’s not what the millions of weary Jets fans at home wanted to hear in that moment, showing a lack of room-reading from the second-year coach.
Minutes after his out-of-touch halftime interview, Glenn added the latest inexcusable game-management blunder to a growing list that has become so long that it would take hours to describe them all (in just 24 games).
On the Jets’ opening drive of the second half, the team faced a potential delay of game penalty as the clock wound down ahead of a third-and-16 play at Miami’s 29-yard line. It seemed like an obvious situation to just take the five-yard penalty, as the Jets would still be in field goal range and were unlikely to pick up the first down either way, but Glenn burned a timeout to save the five yards.
Burning early-half timeouts usually turns out costly, something Glenn should know by now, as he’s committed the error numerous times this season and last. This seemed like a particularly obvious situation to prioritize a valuable timeout over five yards. Yet, Glenn showed once again that he has learned little to nothing as a game manager. Unsurprisingly, the Jets later paid for not having a third timeout to save time, as the Dolphins iced the game late in the fourth quarter with the Jets down by three.
But at least the Jets used that timeout to set up a wonderful play to convert on third-and-16, right?
No. Geno Smith checked the ball down for a 7-yard pickup, and to rub salt in the wound, Jason Sanders missed the 40-yard field goal anyway.
The Jets have reached a new low under Glenn, which is saying quite a bit given that they started 0-7 under his watch. This was supposed to be a “get-right” game for the Jets, an opportunity to beat up on a weak opponent at home after losing some close games against a tough opening schedule that featured five winning teams in the first six weeks. It was their chance to prove that progress is truly being made, at least in the sense that the team has graduated from “bad” to “mediocre”.
Instead, they’ve now lost to and are tied in the loss column with a team that most people believed was the league’s worst heading into Week 7. It’s hard to view the Jets as anything but one of the league’s bottom-feeders now, representing little to no progress over last year’s atrocious squad, despite a significant uptick in roster talent.
In fact, talent continues to be all that keeps the Jets in games. If it weren’t for a multitude of incredible individual efforts by tight end Mason Taylor and wide receiver Omar Cooper Jr. (with some credit to Geno Smith for his throws in those situations), the Jets would have been run off the field by Miami. The same appled to many other moments this season, when Garrett Wilson’s frequent heroics, Kenyon Sadiq’s dominance in Detroit, and Braelon Allen’s elusiveness from Weeks 5-6 bailed the team out in situations where the coaching staff wasn’t creating easy answers for the players.
And with Glenn repeatedly making the same errors week after week, nearly halfway into his second season, only blind faith could be used to justify optimism that he and his coaching staff will turn things around over the next 10 games. There is no longer any sort of tangible evidence that he is making a positive impact on the team.
Defensive play-calling? Nope, you can hardly label that as a positive anymore after a game in which the tanking, Malik Willis-led Dolphins torched his defense with Greg Dulcich. The Jets have now given up the second-most first downs (117) over the last five weeks, so the honeymoon period of the first two games is long over with.
Game management? He’s as much of a liability as he’s ever been.
Locker-room culture? Sure, there is essentially no off-field drama, and players seem bought-in, but none of the off-field camaraderie has translated to poise and consistency in high-leverage moments on the field.
Coaching-staff hires? Absolutely not: He botched his entire first-year staff, and his second-chance OC hire, Frank Reich, looks highly questionable if we are putting it generously.
NFL coaches have been fired in-season for much less than what Glenn has shown, both over his 24 games as a whole and over the first seven games of 2026, but the Jets seem unlikely to make an in-season change.
Ownership was panned the last time they fired a coach in-season (Robert Saleh in 2024), causing a hit to the franchise’s reputation, which led to them hiring Glenn in a cycle filled with coaches who have gone on to succeed. Plus, there isn’t much to salvage anyway. Who’s leading them if Glenn is fired? Reich? The coach who, during his last head coaching run, went 1-11 and was fired in-season himself?
Don’t expect Glenn to be canned anytime soon. However, his bed has been snugly made for him in January. If he wants to change that, he will have to pull a rabbit out of his hat unlike any that the NFL world has ever seen.
