Since Woody Johnson purchased the New York Jets in 2000, the team has sampled coaches from the Tony Dungy tree, the Bruce Arians tree, the Bill Belichick tree, the Peyton Manning tree and the Kyle Shanahan tree. All of them had their merits and all of them have produced successful seedlings in other locations, but the reality of Johnson’s ownership to this point is that the one successful hire he made was Rex Ryan.
Given the benefit of hindsight, the reason that Ryan was so successful now seems obvious: He eschewed the idea of a tree. He came in as a steamroller, bulldozed the forest and had everyone in the Jets’ building fall into line behind the force of his personality—including Johnson himself.
As the Robert Saleh–Jeff Ulbrich era came to a chaotic close, Johnson’s move back into the forefront of the organization was obvious. Whether it be weighing in on the quarterback situation or twice firing critical staff members during the season, Johnson’s return from politics (he served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom from 2017 to ’21) signaled a return to reactivity. The Jets, perhaps more than any other NFL franchise, are a sheet flapping in the wind. As in real life, it’s impossible to know which direction the wind will be blowing too far in advance.
And so, Wednesday’s report that the Jets are hiring Aaron Glenn is significant in that Glenn connects the Jets to both a pre-Johnson existence—an era of competence under Bill Parcells, whom Glenn played for in three of his eight seasons as a Jets cornerback—and Glenn’s most recent boss, Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell. While Glenn is not Campbell, Glenn had a front-row seat to see how the power of authenticity and personality can transform even the most moribund of places. The Jets know this all too well, which may have been why they brought Ryan back for an interview in the first place, and hired Mike Tannenbaum to lead the search (Tannenbaum hired Ryan during his time as the team’s GM). Realizing that the only way to make the Jets seem less like themselves is to barrel ahead with rhetoric, brashness or, maybe in Glenn’s case, a kind of marketable stoicism, the team forwent the traditional flipping between offensive and defensive coaches and went with someone they hope can lift a group of battered cynics on his back.
In fairness to Glenn’s predecessor, Robert Saleh, that task was already well underway. Before Johnson fired Saleh when he was a game out of first place, following a narrow loss to the eventual 14-win Minnesota Vikings in London, the Jets felt like a team trending toward recovery. Prior to Aaron Rodgers’s first season with the team, a stockpile of young stars disallowed speaking of the past, felt empowered to voice their vision of the future and logged some impressive wins despite a sinister injury situation that blew up the team’s offensive line.
Of course, those players were eventually confronted with the realities of the franchise once Johnson made his presence felt. The whiplash had some of the team’s better players longing for free agency upon season’s end.
In comes Glenn, whose primary advantage was a lack of concern over the myriad injuries that plagued Detroit’s defense all season. He refuses to be called just a defensive coach, which was evident after his unit picked apart Kevin O’Connell’s Vikings in the regular-season finale to secure a division title, having utilized the bare bones of his roster to throttle a powerful offense. Only a defensive coach with an offensive vision—much like Brian Flores has—can shut down a team that handily.
While winning a press conference isn’t the most important part of this hire, it’s a major step for a Jets team that torched so much of its fan equity at the end of a truly embarrassing 2024 season. No amount of capable quarterback play could prevent the glowing aura of top-down incompetence, restlessness and the desire to be something they are not.
Glenn certainly satisfies that need for a public relations win. The Lions’ two coordinators were seen as a kind of season-long prize, given the depth of Detroit’s turnaround (we covered the Chicago Bears landing Ben Johnson on Monday). Glenn, according to people familiar with the dynamic, had at least one other strong suitor and boldly turned down an interview with the Patriots when it became clear that New England was set on abusing the spirit of the Rooney Rule to streamline Mike Vrabel into office.
It showed in that moment what he displayed on the sideline during his increased airtime as his candidacy became inevitable: a refusal to be shaken and a presence that could handle the stage. The Jets knew this was an absolute necessity. They know what works in Florham Park. And, after a deep search inward, Glenn was really the only candidate that made sense, which is why the Jets wouldn’t let him out of the building to interview anywhere else.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Aaron Glenn Has What the Jets Need.