Aaron Glenn’s first three games of the 2026 season have been objectively better than the first three games of his debut campaign.
The Jets are 1-2 instead of 0-3, and they look far more competitive and competent in the process.
However, for a coach who now owns a 4-16 career record, the bar is much higher than “be better than a team that started 0-7”. Glenn needs to convince the Jets why he should be brought back for a third season and entrusted with three first-round draft picks.
Here are three areas he must improve in to start showing the Jets that he has a legitimate chance of becoming a championship head coach down the line.
3. Emphasizing best players in the game plan
At times, it does not seem like Glenn and the Jets get the most out of their best players.
One of the best examples this season was the team’s usage of defensive tackle Jowon Briggs. Despite Briggs emerging as the Jets’ best defensive lineman in 2025, he was buried on the depth chart in the 2026 season opener, playing just 10 snaps.
Over the next two games, the Jets had to turn back to Briggs in a featured role due to David Onyemata’s injury, and he showed that he is clearly the Jets’ best defensive tackle, making it strange that the team initially planned to use him in such a tiny role.
While an injury has forced the Jets to turn back to Briggs in a featured role, there’s no telling whether Glenn would have continued under-utilizing Briggs if Onyemata were healthy. It raises concerns about whether Glenn and the Jets’ staff are properly optimizing the talent at their disposal.
Another example of this is edge rusher Will McDonald. Despite clearly being the Jets’ most threatening pass rusher, McDonald played just 34% of the Jets’ defensive snaps in their recent loss to Detroit, his lowest rate since his 2023 rookie year. That included under one-third of the Lions’ passing plays; McDonald was on the sidelines for 25 of Jared Goff’s dropbacks.
Yet, the data has clearly shown for two straight seasons that the Jets’ overall defensive efficiency is far better with McDonald on the field than when he is off, even accounting for his struggles against the run. It seems as if Glenn is too attached to an old-school “stop the run” mentality while ignoring the information in front of him that shows McDonald’s presence against the run is not detrimental enough to justify wasting his pass-rush ceiling.
This issue extends to the offensive side, too, where the Jets have occasionally struggled to feature their best weapons.
In their Week 2 loss to the Packers, the Jets threw just one more target to Garrett Wilson (7) than Isaiah Williams (6) in a game where Geno Smith threw 41 passes. Additionally, Jeremy Ruckert had as many receptions (2) as the combination of Kenyon Sadiq and Mason Taylor.
The Jets rectified this against the Lions in Week 3, as Wilson received 13 targets while Sadiq saw eight, but it was once again forced upon them by injuries, as Adonai Mitchell and Mason Taylor were absent.
Great coaches know how to get the most out of their best players. When a team’s highest-ceiling weapons on both sides of the ball are not receiving enough chances to impact the game, it falls on the coaching staff for failing to optimize the talent at their disposal.
2. Blowing timeouts
Timeouts are weapons in the NFL. When you get down to the last two minutes of either half, a timeout can buy you a handful of extra plays, while opening up the playbook.
That’s why it’s imperative not to waste them before their value can be maximized in a two-minute situation.
Aaron Glenn continues to struggle in this regard. Through three games, the Jets have already blown five timeouts prior to intentional usage for clock-management purposes in the waning minutes of a half. He blew at least one in all three games.
There are multiple reasons why these timeouts are blown, including lost challenges and avoiding delay-of-game. While these mistakes are understandable at times, it is a harmful trend when a team blows timeouts in this fashion on such a routine basis.
1. End-of-half management
The Jets often look lost during the final two minutes of either half. Between shoddy clock management, a lack of urgency from the offense, and flat-out poor execution, New York consistently leaves points on the board by failing to capitalize at the end of halves.
Glenn and the Jets are being praised for their competitiveness, but that is hardly praise-worthy in the NFL; it’s the expectation. Just this past week, 12 of the 16 games around the league were decided by one score. It is not an accomplishment to lose by one score.
The great coaches in this league find ways to consistently be the differentiator between a one-score loss and a one-score win. They win on the margins to net those valuable few points that turn three-point losses into three-point wins.
Through 20 games, Glenn has consistently been outperformed by opposing coaches on those margins. The Jets’ Week 2 loss to Matt LaFleur and the Green Bay Packers was the most glaring example, as Glenn and the Jets’ coaching staff committed numerous costly blunders in high-leverage spots that allowed Green Bay to get back into a game they had no business being in.
It is often said that coaches make the greatest impact on a game within the last two minutes of each half. Glenn continues to make a negative impact in those moments, even if his team has looked much more respectable across the other 56 minutes.
Given how often NFL games are close, though, Glenn can only be applauded for “competitiveness” for so long. The next step for him is proving he can consistently give the Jets the edge they need to come out on the right side of these close games, and it comes down to his decisions in those all-important four minutes.
