Straightforward Jets coach Aaron Glenn doesn't need 'Glenn Guys' to get his point across
Jets head coach Aaron Glenn talks to reporters after OT’s at the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center in Florham Park, N.J., on Tuesday. Credit: Ed Murray
FLORHAM PARK, NJ – Bill Parcells always had his guys. Wherever he went he brought a few familiar faces from his previous stops and that posse of locker room preceptors would help to set expectations and spread the way he wanted things done.
Aaron Glenn was a Parcells Guy.
Now Glenn is a head coach himself. And naturally he brought with him a number of underlings who he worked with during his time in Detroit and at various other teams. As for the players, he vouched for and helped add former Lions wide receiver Josh Reynolds to the Jets’ roster.
Reynolds could be this team’s Glenn Guy… if Glenn actually needed one.
“No!” Reynolds said emphatically on Tuesday about having to help spread the Gospel of Glenn to his new teammates. “Because he’s going to tell you what he means. He’s going to tell you what he expects.”
The Jets will require a lot to make this new era work. They have to stay healthy, they have to improve on personal levels, and they’ll need a little bit of luck that hasn’t been on their side for more than a half century.
A translator for their head coach? Nope. Not necessary.
Players have used terms such as “straight-forward” and “honest” to describe Glenn so far. He’s had lengthy conversations with many of them about where he thinks they can improve and how they can further help the team. Rosetta Stones are not part of that process.
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It’s why Glenn scoffed at the idea of Reynolds playing an ambassador role.
“I care about good players,” Glenn said. “If he is a good player I want him in the locker room. If I knew him or not, that doesn’t matter to me. The fact of the matter is [Reynolds] is a good player and I think he has a lot left in the tank. I want him in the locker room. Plus I think he’s a good person. It just so happens that he’s played in Detroit and we happen to know each other.”
Maybe that’s the case for Glenn, but for Reynolds, knowing the new head coach – not to mention new offensive coordinator Tanner Engstrand whom he also was with in Detroit – is a big reason why he came to the Jets on a one-year deal this offseason.
“I knew what kind of coach, what kind of person he was,” Reynolds said of Glenn. “I knew what kind of culture he was going to bring here and I knew it would fit well for the Jets. I was like ‘That’d be a good situation.’ I was excited to be a part of it.”
That culture, Reynolds said, can be summed up in two words: Hard work.
“I’m not going to use the word grit, but it is grit,” he added. “We get hit in the mouth, we’re going to get back up and we are going to hit you back. That’s kind of what this team needs. And how to win games. He’s going to bring that here.”
The Jets have already become fully immersed in those ideals. Tuesday’s workout included a number of skirmishes. Such incidents typically pop up during the sweltering grind of training camp in August, not on breezy June days during voluntary OTAs with the pads still in the equipment room and full contact banned.
While Glenn speaks his mind, there are things Reynolds can help with thanks to that shared history. Players have sidled up to him and asked questions about Glenn, mostly about what training camp will be like.
“We work,” Reynolds said. “That’s facts.”
And his familiarity with the playbook that Engstrand has brought with him allows Reynolds to be a bit of a resource for anyone who has questions regarding the Xs and Os.
“Honestly I thought it would be a little harder,” Reynolds said of reconnecting with a system he hasn’t played in since 2023. “But once I heard and saw these plays I was like ‘Oh yeah.’ The memories started flooding back in.”
Soon, though, as the offense sinks in, such tutoring won’t be necessary. Reynolds knows that if he is going to stick around it won’t be as Glenn’s locker room liaison, it will have to be based on actual football.
There are valid questions regarding that. At 30 years old he is coming off a traumatic 2024 season that began with him playing for the Broncos and saw him involved in a shooting incident in October in which he suffered what the team called “minor injuries” to his left arm and the back of his head. He was released by Denver in December and claimed by the Jaguars, who then cut him in March.
“I’m blessed to be here and blessed to still be playing,” he said of his recent past. “Life is precious for sure.”
With Glenn vouching for him (not to mention a relationship with new general manager Darren Mougey who was in the Denver front office that signed him to a two-year deal in 2024) the Jets brought Reynolds here.
The Jets will need someone to play the No. 2 receiver role opposite Garrett Wilson this season and Reynolds, Allen Lazard and Tyler Johnson are among the leading candidates for that important job.
“Listen, Garrett is going to have his chances against one-on-ones,” Glenn said. “Is he going to get doubled? Yeah, he’ll get doubled. He’s a good receiver. But when you do that it leaves somebody else in a one-on-one situation and I’ll take that with our guys all day.”
“I’m here for whatever they need me for,” Reynolds said. “If it’s No. 2, No. 3, I’m here to help the team win. Time will tell. We still have to go through camp and all that. Guys will emerge and guys will fall. It’s just the nature of the business.”
And, as Reynolds knows more than most but as the other Jets are quickly learning for themselves, it’s the nature of playing for Glenn as well.
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.
