The New York Jets are just 12 days away from the opening game of their 2026 season, which is poised to be a pivotal one for the franchise.
Rather than being unequivocally united in the pursuit of a championship, Jets fans are split into many factions as the opener approaches. Different segments of the fan base have vastly different goals, expectations, and mindsets as they prepare to pull their 15-year-old Darrelle Revis jerseys out of the closet and root for an undefeated Jets team.
Here are the five brands of Jets fans as New York prepares to storm into Nashville.
1. Hyper-optimists: All-in on playoff pursuit
Every sports fan base has its eternal optimists. No matter how dark things get, they always embrace the endless possibilities presented by a new season.
Even the Jets have their share of followers who proudly reside on this end of the fandom spectrum.
To them, the glass is always half-full, and the grass is always greenest where it is watered. Tanking for a new quarterback and a new coach? Nah. Aaron Glenn and Geno Smith can get it done. We’ll worry about 2027 when we get there, but for now, why can’t this team make a playoff push?
“Why not us?”
There are plenty of valid reasons to be optimistic about the 2026 Jets. Being optimistic about them is not far-fetched by any stretch of the imagination. Their roster has been significantly upgraded on paper, the coaching staff has been overhauled, and there are plenty of young players poised to take leaps.
New York has the pieces to field one of the league’s best run defenses. They also have the potential to build their first league-average passing attack in over a decade, thanks to the additions of Smith, Adonai Mitchell, Omar Cooper Jr., and Kenyon Sadiq.
The secondary, which had zero interceptions last season, acquired enough new pieces to potentially leap to respectability this year. The offensive line has top-10 upside. The special teams unit, led by renowned coach Chris Banjo, was dominant last year, and the team has brought back enough key contributors to potentially do it again.
All of these hypotheses are reasonable, and most fans would admit as much (save for two of the five fan-factions on our list). What separates the hyper-optimistic Jets fan from the rest is the belief that all of these things will transpire.
And you know what? Maybe all of them will transpire.
Who’s to say they won’t? Give thanks to the unwaveringly hopeful Jets fan in your life. These are the types of people who push us forward in life when things are at their darkest.
They are absolutely the type of fan to look at a 3-14 team with no franchise quarterback and no chance to draft one, a struggling head coach, and no star defenders, and tell you, “The night is darkest just before the dawn.”
Maybe, for once, they’ll be right this time, and Geno Smith really is about to save Gotham.
2. Realistic optimists: All-in on “competitive season” pursuit
There is territory in the land of optimism for fans who are not quite ready to tout a franchise that just picked No. 2 overall as a contender to reach a place it has not been to since 2010. We call these fans the “realistic optimists”.
You can be optimistic about your favorite football team while acknowledging its faults and understanding that not everything is peachy. Yes, it’s possible, hyper-optimists.
These fans are still excited for Week 1, perhaps more than most fans outside of the hyper-optimists, but their bar for a successful season is held to a realistic level.
They probably are hopeful that the Jets will hit their ceiling in many areas. Maybe they think that the offensive line and the run defense will have excellent years, but the pass offense and pass defense are still capped out at below-average, while Geno Smith is just competent enough to be the team’s most watchable quarterback in years.
Through this formula, they can envision a 6-11 or 7-10 season in which the team looks reasonably competitive, and that is all they are hoping for.
That would be a significant step forward for the team compared to the 2025 season. Whether or not it serves them well in the long term is another question, one that dictates the mindset carried by the fans in our other three groups, but the realistic optimists don’t particularly care. They enjoy rooting for their favorite team to win football games and are eager about the possibility of short-term progress, regardless of what the long-term implications are.
These fans might not be sold strongly enough on Aaron Glenn to pick fights with anyone who criticizes him, but they probably lean to the optimistic side on Glenn’s outlook, and are at least willing to see through what he can do in his second year with a new staff, a revamped roster, and play-calling duties.
The opinion of Glenn is arguably the main thing that separates each of these five groups.
3. The early-season observers: Will root in Week 1, but in “wait and see” mode on season-long goals
The thing about being an NFL fan is that you can never truly let your team go.
No matter how many times your team breaks your heart, you just can’t leave them, because you know that one day, the sun will come back out, and when it does, you don’t want to be the guy or gal who hid during the storm and returned when the clouds parted.
This is why every Jets fan will be watching the team take on the Titans in Week 1. Surely, Jets fans as a group will not be as collectively noisy as they were ahead of seasons like 2023 or 2010, but they will all be watching.
The reason the fan base will be so quiet, though, is that a high percentage of fans do not feel strongly enough about a particular direction for the team to be hooting and hollering about them on social media or at the proverbial water cooler, whether it’s touting the Jets as this year’s surprise playoff team or screaming at a radio host to fire Aaron Glenn while sitting in traffic on the LIE.
Many fans are simply in “wait and see” mode with the franchise. They’ll be watching and rooting in Week 1, but their stance on whether to tank, root for a playoff push, or feel absolutely nothing as they stare at the screen like Homelander will be determined as the season goes along, with the Titans game carrying immense weight in that evaluation process.
If the Jets win in Week 1, many of the early-season observers will think, “Hmm, you have my attention. Show me again.”
Then, if the Jets go out and win again in Week 2, in their home opener against a Packers team without Micah Parsons and Josh Jacobs, you can expect many fans in this faction to climb into Group 2 with the realistic optimists. Depending on how pretty the wins are, some fans may even skip a step and join Group 1.
But if the Jets lose in Week 1, you can bet that a large chunk of the early-season observers will quickly be on the verge of giving up.
With a loss in Week 2, there would be little reason to be hopeful about the team as they prepare for a two-game road trip to Chicago and Detroit. Another 0-4 start would be on the horizon, and calls for Glenn’s job would amplify, thanks to many of the fans who started the season on the fence hopping over to the “Fire Glenn and tank!” crew.
Which brings us to our next group of fans.
4. Pro-tankers: “March For Arch”
We know that the Jets’ long-term franchise quarterback is not on the roster. That much is for certain.
The team will definitely enter the 2027 NFL draft in need of a quarterback. With three first-round picks at their disposal, they can maneuver the board to acquire one if they need to.
What remains in doubt is whether Aaron Glenn will be involved in selecting that quarterback—and whether Jets fans should want him to be.
No Jets fan in their right mind could claim that they are completely sold on Glenn yet, even the hyper-optimists. He is a 3-14 coach. However, fans in the first three groups are willing (to varying degrees) to see how the 2026 season plays out before kicking Glenn to the curb and deeming him unworthy of drafting and developing a franchise quarterback.
Those fans could be convinced to give Glenn the rights to draft a franchise quarterback if the Jets have a solid, much-improved season in which he grows significantly as a coach. They are also comfortable with falling back on the three first-rounders to make a trade if it must be done as a consequence of the team showing major improvement in the standings.
Some fans, though, are already done with Glenn: the “pro-tankers”. They saw enough in 2025 to be convinced that he simply isn’t the guy, and, as a result, they would rather see the Jets bottom out in 2026, thereby ensuring Glenn’s exit and enabling them to draft the best possible quarterback prospect without trading draft picks.
For these fans, there is a particular nightmare scenario that leads them to root for losses as early as Week 1: purgatory.
The Jets have been there before. They won seven games in a blatantly phony fashion with Adam Gase in 2019, convincing the team to keep him around despite his having obviously proven that he was not the answer as the team’s head coach. Gase proceeded to lead a 2-14 season in which the team ruined the development of third-year quarterback Sam Darnold.
Pro-tank fans loathe the idea of this scenario. They don’t want to see the Jets double their win total to a whopping 6 to convince the team to run it back with a 9-25 defensive-minded head coach and give him the right to trade multiple premium draft picks for a franchise quarterback. It’s a total nightmare for those still seeing ghosts from the Gase decision and its ensuing domino effect on the franchise.
Their philosophy is not completely misguided. Glenn is already trying to establish himself as a historic outlier. Very few head coaches have started their careers as poorly as he did and gone on to be successful; he is trying to be the first defensive-minded head coach to start 0-6 and eventually lead that team to the playoffs since Jimmy Johnson of the Dallas Cowboys in 1989.
Pragmatically speaking, there is a legitimate argument that it might be better for the Jets’ long-term health to just get the Glenn era over with than allow an improved yet still mediocre season to convince them that perennial playoff contention is on the horizon under his lead. By this logic, New York would have to be a playoff team this year to squash concerns about giving Glenn a third year.
At least, that is how the pro-tankers see it, but fans in the other groups would wholeheartedly disagree.
Only a small percentage of Jets fans are passionately in this group as Week 1 approaches. But make no mistake: If the team loses in Week 1, many fans will quickly consider joining this faction.
If the Jets want fans on their side this season, they will have to win them over immediately. With just a couple of ugly losses early in the season, many fans will already decide they’ve had enough of Glenn and would rather cut their losses than root their hearts out for six measly wins that won’t significantly change his outlook as a head coach.
Maintaining the possibility of a playoff pursuit is what will keep fans invested, which is why staying in the “In The Hunt” graphic as long as possible must be Glenn’s goal, not starting 1-7 and Gase-ing his way to 6-11.
If you don’t understand the logic behind why some fans might shift to a pro-tank mindset so quickly, look at it this way: The Jets’ 2026 season is not occurring in a vacuum. Rather, it is coming off a 3-14 campaign in which the Jets were outscored by 203 points and proceeded to allow the coach of that team to rebuild the entire staff. Now, they are mulling whether to let that same coach make one of the most important draft selections in franchise history.
Glenn needs to use the first two weeks to show fans why they should get behind him for a full 17 games. There aren’t many pro-tankers right now, but if the Jets are 0-2 after losing to Robert Saleh and a Micah Parsons/Josh Jacobs-less Packers team, a sizable portion of fans in Groups 1-3 will slide down to Group 4.
5. The apathetics: “Believe it when I see it”
There is a gray area between Group 3 (“early-season observers”) and Group 5, “the apathetics”. Both are heading into Week 1 without the emotional investment to be nervous about the game or talking smack to their friends about how many points the Jets will win by.
What separates Group 5 is a near-total commitment to apathy until the team truly proves itself.
Some Group 3 members might be apathetic at the moment, but open to quickly re-investing their emotions if the first two weeks convince them. A Group 5 member, though, is beaten and battered from the years of pain. It will take a whole lot more than a 2-0 start to get these fans to buy in.
It’s hard to blame Jets fans who have reached a state of apathy. The cruel double-whammy of the Aaron Rodgers era left many Jets fans in the emotional stagnation they currently find themselves in.
Not only was the franchise overflowing with optimism, but it also felt like the optimism was completely justified in a football sense, rather than contrived hype. There was no way this couldn’t work. One of the greatest quarterbacks of all time was joining an up-and-coming young team with an elite defense, a strong run game, and a star receiver.
Every Jets fan should be entitled to free therapy for how it all went down.
Aaron Rodgers’ Achilles injury in 2023 was as devastating a gut punch as any football fan has ever endured. But there was at least hope that he would come back and give it another go in 2024. The team doubled down on the hype of Rodgers’ return by bolstering the roster even further with quality moves that seemed to make football sense.
On paper, the Jets had built a juggernaut. This team had to yield a winning record at the bare minimum, right? “Maybe a Super Bowl won’t happen, but at least we’ll have fun and win some games,” thought those sweet, naive Jets fans, back when the word “fun” still meant something.
When Rodgers triumphantly returned to lead a 5-12 season, it left many fans wondering how they could ever possibly buy into the team again. After that failed, it will take a lot to get some fans to believe.
That leaves us with the apathetic segment of the fan base. These fans could watch Geno Smith lead the Jets to a 6-3 start, and they still might not be excited. After all, even when the Jets last did that, it ended in a 7-10 season.
Expect these fans to sarcastically cheer at every positive Jets moment in Week 1, and follow it up with a snarky comment about how the real Geno will blow it on the next drive, probably in a thick Long Island accent.
Well, Jets fans, which group are you in as Week 1 approaches?
Surely, the readers of this article will be divided among all five groups, and there may even be other subgroups that I neglected to mention. One thing is for certain, though: The easiest way for the Jets to get every fan on the same page would be to just go out and have a 17-0 season.
That would be a nice, simple way to finally get Jets fans to see eye to eye, right?
Well, even then, though, fans would probably egg each other’s houses over sitting the starters in Week 18 and choosing who the Jets should prefer to face in the divisional round.
And that relentless passion is exactly what makes Jets fans so special… even if that passion has simmered into a dormant volcano waiting to erupt within many a weary fan.
