For Aaron Glenn to succeed with Jets, Woody Johnson has to stay out of his way
New Jets coach Aaron Glenn, left, will have to navigate dealing with owner Woody Johnson to succeed with the team. Credit: Michael Reaves/Getty Images; Jim McIsaac
Aaron Glenn will have a lot of obstacles to overcome if he is going to be successful in his new job as head coach of the Jets. There is a 14-year playoff drought with which to contend, a 41-year-old quarterback about whom to decide, and a bunch of young star players whose rookie contracts are on the verge of expiring in the next year or two. This is a roster with the rare window that, like a Dutch door, is opening and closing at the same time.
Glenn is also going to experience the inevitable failures, doubts, lessons and miscues that always accompany first-timers like him. Sure, he’s been in and around pro football for decades as a player, scout, coach and coordinator, but it takes time to break in the big chair he’ll be sitting in now. It won’t be a comfy fit right from the start. It never is.
Oh, and the Jets don’t yet have a general manager to be his wingman in all of this.
That’s why it is impossible for anyone to say, as Glenn embarks on this journey, whether he will be any good at this.
The Jets have trotted out many promising head coaches over the years, some of whom stumbled out of the gase, er, pardon us, gate, while others hit an early stride. Still, none were able to accomplish the job for which they were hired: Winning it all.
So what’s the best way to give a wide-eyed innocent like Glenn a fighting chance to achieve his goals?
Eliminate the one hurdle that has existed for almost all of his predecessors, the one common element none of them could clear.
Woody Johnson has navigated his team through this dual hiring process. Glenn was at the top of his list at the start and he wound up there at the end. In between, Johnson met with more than a dozen candidates for each of the open positions. He listened to the men he brought in to help him make sense of the maze of voices and faces that understandably would start to blur together. And he wound up with a respected, highly thought of, well-regarded head coach. He’ll introduce Glenn at a news conference at some time in the coming days, stand up there with a jersey and a helmet and smile.
Good job, Woody. Seriously. It isn’t often we can say that.
Now get out of his way.
And the same goes for whoever winds up as the general manager, too.
Meddlesome owners — and Johnson has certainly become one since his return to everyday oversight from his political venture four or so years ago — are rarely the ones who hoist trophies each February. The good ones — the smart ones — find the right football people to run things and then let them be. Of course there is going to be a role for ownership with every franchise, whether it is approving big free-agency expenditures or high draft picks. And Johnson will be well within his rights to nix or nod to any of them. But in an ideal organization those need to become the rare instances of input from Johnson’s level of management and expertise.
The Jets are clearly trying to follow in the footsteps of the Lions, the team Glenn most recently coached for. They had spent more time as a league laughingstock than the Jets and were able to become perennial contenders in short order thanks to their shrewd hires and player moves.
A better blueprint for them may be the team that just beat Detroit and will play in the NFC Championship on Sunday, though. The Commanders have executed the U-turn of the year in the NFL, going from four wins to a game away from the Super Bowl. Many elements went into that quick rebuild that included a new general manager, new staff, and new quarterback. Yet even if they had hired Dan Quinn and drafted Jayden Daniels, it’s hard to imagine Washington would have been anywhere close to this successful if Dan Snyder was still the owner. Josh Harris bought the team and things changed immediately.
That’s the kind of culture shift the Jets need.
Now, despite the dreams of many Jets fans, Johnson isn’t going to be selling at any point in the foreseeable future. But that doesn’t mean the Jets won’t have an overhaul in tenor and philosophy from his office.
If they can’t have a new owner, surely the Jets can benefit from the next best thing: A new ownership approach.
It is counterintuitive, but if Johnson wants what he says he wants — and there is no reason to believe otherwise — then he needs to stand down and not step in.
No more “suggestions” about personnel. No more insisting on trades. No more lineup tweaks. Glenn and the to-be-named general manager are already going to have their heads clouded by the parts of their jobs they are ready for, and they’ll be further dizzied by the aspects for which they are not. Having Johnson over their shoulder, scrutinizing and brainstorming, will only make it that much more challenging to overcome the pitfalls that can’t be removed.
Fixing the Jets is a big, tough, almost insurmountable job. Johnson has hired Glenn to do just that.
The least he can do now is make it just a little bit easier for him.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
