It was Week 5, and the coach couldn’t take it anymore. Week after week, his players were starting slow, fighting back, and falling short. Battle wounds heal and become scars, but that doesn’t make them hurt any less. This game was the hardest one yet. They had kept the score close all day and finally went up with a touchdown in the final minute. His defense just needed a stop. It didn’t happen. The opposing kicker made a field goal as time expired, a fifth straight loss to start the season.
Standing in front of reporters after the 19-17 loss to the Minnesota Vikings, Dan Campbell’s eyes started to well up.
“When you see your players give all that they have and you lose that way, it’s tough,” he said. “You know, you don’t want that for them.”
Each time the Detroit Lions lost in 2021 — and they lost plenty, 13 times — served as validation for those who doubted Campbell would ever amount to anything as a head coach, especially after his infamous “kneecap-biting” introductory press conference. But Campbell didn’t care much about that, because he felt like the Lions were building something, even if nobody outside of his building could see it.
“We haven’t quite got over the hump, but I do think, in the long run, this is going to pay dividends for us,” Campbell said that day. “As ugly as it is right now and hard to swallow, I do think we’re building something special here that’s going to serve us well in the long term.”
Aaron Glenn was there. He was Campbell’s defensive coordinator, but more than that, his most trusted confidant, sounding board and friend on staff. Campbell says now that the Lions wouldn’t have crawled their way out of the NFL’s dungeon if not for the way he and Glenn, in tandem, stayed true to their core message, their core values, through those struggles.
As involved as he was, Glenn wasn’t the head coach back then. It was Campbell taking it on the chin, defending his players, doing his best to keep them motivated without letting the standings dictate their passion.
But Glenn is a head coach now. The Jets are 0-6, like Campbell’s Lions were in 2021, fresh off a 13-11 loss to the Broncos in London.
The noise is getting loud — louder than anything Campbell ever dealt with. But Glenn knew (or should’ve known) that was coming when he took the job, returning to the team that drafted him in 1994, for an organization that hasn’t made the playoffs since 2010, the league’s longest drought. With each loss, with each mistake Glenn makes — on the field, at the podium — questions about his ability to do the impossible (bring the Jets back from the abyss) intensify. Some Jets fans are tired of waiting and can’t help but wonder aloud if he should be one-and-done. His name has already started to appear on the “next coach fired” odds lists.
The darkness around here can feel all-consuming. But Glenn insists that he still sees the light.
“You have to go through these times, you have to figure out exactly how you’re going to end up winning games and continue to press forward on that,” Glenn said Monday. “And I’m not wavering from that. I’ve been through that with Detroit … I’m just not — I’m not going to waver from that at all.”
Let’s get this out of the way: Glenn is not getting fired. Not this season, and not in the offseason either.
There are a few reasons for that, but let’s start with the most important one: Patience. Owner Woody Johnson, according to multiple team sources, has mostly stayed out of the way so far — he’s letting Glenn build the team, the culture, in his vision. Johnson, as The Athletic has reported over the years, hasn’t always been good about staying out of the way when things have gone poorly.
It should also be noted that Johnson is paying Glenn handsomely — multiple league sources say Glenn’s compensation is higher than that of Robert Saleh, who was reportedly making $5 million annually. If Johnson fired Glenn after this season, he would be paying him a significant salary for, reportedly, four more seasons to not coach the Jets.
And yet, things have gone poorly through six games, worse than anyone in the organization could have predicted. Glenn shoulders the blame for that, especially in light of some questionable decision-making during the loss to the Broncos. Johnson surely isn’t OK with that 0-6 mark either. But Glenn sold Johnson and the Jets’ search committee on a Lions-esque rebuild — that rebuild started poorly, too.
Glenn, at minimum, deserves a shot at seeing it through, certainly beyond just his first season. Glenn said that he and Johnson “have had really good conversations” and that the Jets owner “understands everything that we’re trying to do.”
“Listen, obviously everybody wants to make sure they have a winning record, but here’s the thing, a lot of things that were not (said) from the very beginning,” Glenn said. “We’re not talking about the Super Bowl, we’re trying to build a foundation of making sure we win consistently — and how do you do that? You just can’t throw things out there and just have an unstable foundation and expect for things to be just right …
“I know everybody wants to win, but nobody wants to go through the hard stuff, and that’s what we’re going through right now. We’re going through the hard times to put ourselves in positions to win.”
Each time the Jets lose, Glenn has brought up his experience in Detroit. It has worn thin with a segment of the fan base, but it’s not difficult to figure out why he keeps saying it.
Put the Jets’ first six games in 2025 and the Lions’ first six games in 2021 side-by-side, and they are eerily similar.
• The Lions were 26th in offensive EPA, 28th in defensive EPA and eighth in special teams EPA, according to TruMedia. The Jets: 28th offensive EPA, 28th defensive EPA and ninth special teams EPA.
• The Lions were outscored by 85 points in the first three quarters of those six games, while the Jets have been outscored by 65 points in the first three quarters of their games.
• The flipside is the same, too: The Lions, playing from behind, outscored their opponents by 22 points in the fourth quarter, while the Jets have outscored theirs by 18 points in the fourth. The Lions were down 38-10 in a 41-33 loss to the 49ers, 13-0 in a 19-17 loss to the Ravens, and 21-0 in a 24-14 loss to the Bears. The Jets trailed 23-6 in a 2-point loss to the Buccaneers and 17-3 in a 6-point loss to the Dolphins.
Then there are the differences: The Lions’ defense, led by Glenn, had seven takeaways as their offense turned it over eight times. The Jets have one takeaway — which didn’t come until Week 6 — and eight offensive turnovers.
Detroit had a castoff quarterback, too, though Jared Goff — at the time viewed as a throw-in portion of the trade that sent Matthew Stafford to the Rams — was a better fit for the Lions’ timing-based offense. Justin Fields, Glenn’s hand-picked quarterback, has come under fire recently for his propensity to hold onto the ball too long, which led to many of the Broncos’ nine sacks in London. Notably, it’s unclear who the Jets’ quarterback of the future is, just as it was for the Lions six games into the 2021 season.
Aaron Glenn worked closely with Dan Campbell as the defensive coordinator in Detroit. (Junfu Han / Imagn Images)
Goff, though, had been to a Super Bowl before joining the Lions; Fields hasn’t quarterbacked a winning team for a full season. It also would be fair to say that this Jets team has more talent — maybe even significantly more — than that 2021 Lions team. In 2021, the Lions only had two players in significant roles who had made a Pro Bowl previously: Goff and tight end T.J. Hockenson. The Jets came into this season with an All-Pro cornerback (Sauce Gardner), star wide receiver (Garrett Wilson), an offensive line featuring four first or second-round draft picks, a Pro Bowl defensive tackle (Quinnen Williams), All-Pro linebacker (Quincy Williams), Pro Bowl defensive end (Jermaine Johnson) and other players — like running back Breece Hall, linebacker Jamien Sherwood, defensive end Will McDonald and cornerback Michael Carter II — considered quality starters. With that level of talent, they should not be 0-6.
There are other reasons for skepticism. Just because one team had a turnaround — one that could be considered unprecedented — that doesn’t mean history will repeat itself for the Jets. Other rebuilds have moved much faster: The Patriots (Mike Vrabel), Jaguars (Liam Coen) and Bears (Ben Johnson) all have first-year coaches and all are in the playoff hunt after miserable 2024 seasons — though all three, inarguably, have better quarterback situations.
But for those wanting to believe in the prospect of a Lions-esque turnaround, the biggest reason is the man both teams have in common: Glenn.
“It’s easy to come to a winning organization where it’s healthy, where you’re thriving, where everybody’s excited,” Kelvin Sheppard, who replaced Glenn as the Lions’ defensive coordinator, told The Athletic in August. “But what they didn’t see was in 2021, where you couldn’t give away tickets to the game, and we had to earn it — to continue to have that same focus, that same mentality, when you’re 0-9, you’re 0-10, you’re 0-10-1. To continue to show back up and be that same person, that isn’t easy. That has to be part of your DNA to be able to push through that.”
Sheppard, and Campbell, both said that it is in Glenn’s DNA. Lions players who spoke to The Athletic agreed.
“We just worried about what we could control,” Campbell said. “And man, just (trying to) get these guys believing in the fact that if we make this one play from the last game that we didn’t make, we’re going to win the next one. Don’t worry about the ‘Oh, we lost again’. No, no, no. Go back and say, ‘Look, we just gotta clean this one up. We gotta clean up this play.’ And our guys did that.
“I never had to worry about what AG was saying in that defensive room, the way he was coaching. I knew that he was saying exactly what I said and what I believed in. Because he believed in it, too. And we did, man. We just went to work, coached our tails off, and these guys —they never gave up.”
Campbell calls that experience the “bedrock” for where they are now, legitimate Super Bowl contenders.
And yet: Good luck telling Jets fans to stay patient.
Glenn has said the last four minutes of each half belong to the head coach — he’s the one making the decisions in-game that define those moments. They haven’t gone according to plan, and there are stats to back that up, especially before halftime: In situations with four minutes or fewer remaining in the first half, the Jets rank 30th in offensive EPA, per TruMedia.
The offense, as mentioned, has struggled to produce before the fourth quarter. too. And before the Broncos game, defense was the Jets’ biggest problem, ranking 31st in points allowed, 32nd in takeaways, 25th in sacks, 31st in pressure percentage and tied for 32nd in missed tackles. That unit stepped up in a major way against the Broncos with its best game — just in time for the offense to have its worst week, finishing with minus-10 net passing yards.
Before halftime, Glenn had a moment that has been roundly criticized since. The Jets successfully pulled off a fake punt in their own territory, only to let the clock run out a few plays later. A frustrated Wilson threw his arms up and then walked with Glenn toward the locker room, still animated. Wilson, a team captain, had pointed words after the game, too.
“I just didn’t know exactly what the plan was,” Wilson said. “And once I figured it out, I was disappointed.”
He later described not feeling like his teammates were playing like they had “nothing to lose,” which, at 0-6, he said, is unacceptable. Frustration is mounting. That doesn’t mean the locker room is fracturing, but it’s certainly not a positive sign that a star is questioning the decision-making of his new coach already.
It’s a contrast from the summer, when Glenn and players, on more than one occasion, took not-so-subtle potshots at the previous regime. The reason: Training camp was much more physical, and Glenn was doing a better job, they said, of holding them accountable for their mistakes than past coaches had. Glenn, with his experience in Detroit, was getting his players ready to better handle the moments of adversity, when they’d often crumbled in the past.
That hasn’t translated to the games, not yet at least.
Offseason “vibes don’t really matter at the end of the day,” guard John Simpson said after the Broncos loss. “It’s about winning. I feel like a vibe is not going to get you over that hump. It’s about executing when you get out there. I never get into all that hype; I just focus on what I can do. We just gotta execute better.”
Added Johnson: “We just gotta keep being thumb pointers, look in the mirror, see what we can improve on. I know we’re never going to be finger pointers. That’s how it breaks down and breaks apart.”
The players say that hasn’t happened yet. If Glenn wants to survive beyond 2025 — it can’t happen.
What comes next?
The Jets will almost surely miss the playoffs for a 15th straight season. Even if they finish strong, that won’t save Glenn long-term; in 2019, the Jets started 1-7 in Adam Gase’s first year and finished 7-9. Gase was fired after a disastrous 2020 season.
If the Jets continue down the path they’re on, there will be questions about whether Glenn is the right coach to steward the selection of the draft’s No. 1 pick, likely a quarterback. The Titans just fired Brian Callahan six weeks into his first season with No. 1 pick Cam Ward; he was the fourth straight head coach fired in-season after selecting a QB with the draft’s first pick.
If the Jets do find themselves in that scenario, landing the No. 1 pick — or somewhere close to it — that would mean they finished somewhere in the range of the Lions’ 3-13-1 record in 2021. In the aftermath, Campbell fired veteran offensive coordinator Anthony Lynn and replaced him with Ben Johnson. If the Jets finish with three wins, despite the talent on their roster, Glenn might have to make difficult decisions. If the defense plays more like it did in the first five weeks than it did against the Broncos, then defensive coordinator Steve Wilks — like Lynn, a veteran coach — could be on the hot seat.
After that, the pressure will be on. The Lions started 1-6 in 2022, after which Lions owner Sheila Ford Hamp publicly endorsed Campbell. Detroit went on to finish 9-8. There’s no guarantee Johnson will act the same way that Hamp did.
It’s fair to wonder if Glenn has what it takes to turn the Jets around. It’s also fair to wonder if he’ll have the opportunity to do so. He is banking on exactly that: time.
“Just give him time to cook his meal,” said Glenn’s brother Jason, also a former Jet. “He’s got to shop for these groceries, he’s going to cook a great meal — just give him time to cook it.”