3 team-wide goals for New York Jets in second preseason game

While many individual players stood out in the New York Jets’ preseason opener, the outing also represented a team-wide success for the organization. As a collective group, the Jets embodied many of the traits Aaron Glenn is hoping to establish in his first season at the helm.

Heading into their second preseason game, here are three things that Glenn should expect to see from his team as a unit.

Discipline with avoidable penalties

The Jets led the NFL in penalties in each of the past two seasons. It’s an issue that Glenn has expressed his desire to curb since he was hired in January.

Glenn’s challenge is to figure out how to get his team to reduce penalties without compromising the increased intensity and aggression that he wants them to play with. In last week’s preseason opener, the Jets played with newfound physicality that looked unfamiliar to fans, but it came at the cost of 10 penalties.

How can you get your team to play with 110% effort and take their foot off the gas pedal in the heat of the moment to avoid a flag? It’s a thin tightrope for Glenn to walk.

The reality is, if Glenn wants his team to maintain its physical identity, he might have to deal with the Jets being among the league leaders in penalties again. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. In 2024, the Ravens ranked third in penalties. Five other teams with 10+ victories – Buffalo, Washington, Green Bay, Houston, and Seattle – also ranked in the top 12.

If you tend to commit slightly more penalties because you’re playing with an extra oomph that other teams aren’t playing with, you will make up for those extra penalties in the long run.

But what you can’t have, no matter the situation, are the completely avoidable penalties.

In Green Bay, the Jets had three foolish unsportsmanlike conduct penalties that could have been avoided while still playing hard. Eric Watts and Marcelino McCrary-Ball committed very late hits out of bounds, while Micheal Clemons got involved in a fight after a play.

These are the penalties New York must eradicate. If they commit a few extra holds, pass interferences, or roughing the passers because they are finishing plays with tenacity, the Jets can live with that. They can’t live with the flat-out silly penalties. Glenn made that clear when he chastised McCrary-Ball and benched Clemons.

Let’s see if his message got across.

Continue to tackle well and run hard

Glenn introduced live tackling drills early in training camp to prepare his team for game-day contact. It paid dividends in the preseason opener.

Against the Packers, New York combined for just eight missed tackles across defense and special teams, tied for the seventh-fewest in Week 1 of the preseason.

Even more impressively, the Jets’ starting defense combined for only one missed tackle.

This success translated to the offensive side, too. New York’s ball carriers were prepared to withstand the contact of opposing tacklers, as they forced missed tackles all night long. Green Bay missed 19 tackles, tying them for the most in the NFL.

With 19 forced missed tackles and just eight missed tackles of their own, New York had a plus-11 ratio of missed tackles, which led the NFL.

It’s just one week; perhaps the Packers were underprepared for this meaningless game, while the Jets were overprepared for it. There is a long way to go for Glenn to prove that his team can legitimately establish itself as one of the most physical teams in football.

But this was a phenomenal start. While it was only an exhibition, we saw Glenn’s tactics yielding the intended results in a real game.

If the Jets can do that for a second consecutive week, we will be one step closer to believing that New York can translate this success into the regular season.

Win the line of scrimmage

In conjunction with their tackling advantage, the Jets consistently won the line of scrimmage in Saturday’s opener. Most impressively, their trench success continued no matter which level of the depth chart was in the game.

Both the starting and reserve offensive lines were generating consistent push. On the other side, the starting and reserve defensive lines were creating consistent pressure.

New York’s steady success at the line of scrimmage displayed a team-wide intensity that permeates throughout the entire roster. It showed the impact that Glenn and his coaching staff are already having on the players, whether they are well-paid starters or undrafted rookies with no shot of making the team.

Just like with the tackling, we cannot yet say whether this is an indicator of what is to come in the regular season. It’s just the preseason, and the Jets are uniquely equipped for preseason success because of the urgency that Glenn is coaching his team to play with in these games.

Nonetheless, if we can see the Jets establish a trend of dominating the line of scrimmage in both phases across three preseason games, it would be an exciting sign that Glenn’s teachings are paying off.