Tom Rock: Jets can talk all they want about winning, but it won't matter until they actually start doing so
Jets coach Aaron Glenn looks on during the first half of a preseason game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at MetLife Stadium on Aug. 14, 2026. Credit: Jim McIsaac
At least the Jets are in complete sync when it comes to one thing.
Throughout this week, they were asked, at various points, what will make this season a success. In recent years, the answers to such queries came with vague replies such as improvement, respect, meaningful games at certain points in the schedule.
Last year Aaron Glenn set the bar at the ambiguous height of building a team that “fans could be proud of.”
It’s fair to say they fell unambiguously short of that.
Bu this year the answer has been clear and concise and as consistent as if the league’s uniform police were marking down their replies rather than measuring how much green is showing on their socks.
Glenn, Geno Smith, Garrett Wilson, Breece Hall, everyone else, they all said the same thing.
Wins.
They easily said the word more times than they delivered them last year, when they posted three of them. Vegas has the over/under for team victories this season at 5.5, but it would have put casinos out of business if it had put odds on how often that word would be uttered this week alone.
“It starts with wins and it ends with wins,” Smith said. “That’s all that matters in this league.”
There were even a few pokes at the idea of the playoffs, something that hasn’t happened for this organization since the 2010 season. Wilson called making the postseason “very realistic” and Hall casually listed it among his goals for the year.
It’s hard to buy any of it.
Oh, they’re absolutely right. This season will be judged by the team’s record. Glenn’s future will be determined by it. The roster and the direction in which this franchise heads will be shaped in part by the standings.
But the idea that they can pull it off? Heading into Sunday’s opener in Tennessee and embarking on the 16-game journey that will follow it, it feels like more empty optimism from a team that somehow has snookered its fan base with unfulfilled hope for the better part of six decades.
From at least one perspective, it seems as if they are falling for it again.
According to a “study” by the folks at Casino Guru USA who surveyed more than 1,000 NFL fans last month, the Jets have the second-most-loyal fans in the league despite not winning a title since the 1968 season.
Their data showed that 95% of Jets fans said they have never stopped supporting the team despite the longest active playoff drought in North American major sports; 42% said they would miss out on attending a family member’s wedding to watch them play in a Super Bowl (which was the highest proportion of all teams), and about 40% said they watch between 14 and 17 games per season even if the team is not performing well.
A few things to unravel here:
First of all, the team that came out on top with the most loyal fans and a “perfect” score of 100 is the Browns. The Cleveland Browns. The Jets scored 81 on that rubric, which took various elements into account, including commitment and on-field results. If the Browns are at the top of any NFL list, you definitely want to be at the other end of it, not running a close second.
Then there is the idea that this survey asked its questions to current fans, which means that anyone who already had jumped ship off the S.S. Woody Johnson at any point in the past decade isn’t figured in. If you’re still rooting hard for the Jets at this point, congratulations. You’ve earned your die-hard status.
And the teams with the least loyal fan bases? The Colts, Patriots, Packers and Eagles. Sure. What do they have to be happy about?
The truth is there probably are just as many Jets “fans” around who would be happier if they lost every game this season for the draft positioning than there are who want them to post a .500 record that would represent stark improvement from 2025.
None of that has anything to do with the Jets players and coaches, of course. They’re focused on winning, so they say. And they undoubtedly believe it, too. Pro athletes and coaches don’t reach that level without nearly hallucinogenic hubris.
Until they start to deliver those wins in acceptable doses, though, it’s all just meaningless, monotonous rhetoric.
Glenn at least understands that what he showed last year is not good enough. Going into his second season as coach, he hasn’t made changes only to his staff and roster; he says he has made them in himself, too.
“I understand what it takes to be a head coach,” he said. “I like being in this position as a head coach to make sure that we can take this team — I say ‘we’ and I emphasize ‘we’ because it’s not just me — that we can take this team exactly where it needs to go. So when I talk about something to prove, I want to prove it to myself more than anything.”
Winning is the only proof that matters. He knows that too. He told us. They all did.
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.
