Jets would love to follow Patriots' super-quick turnaround
New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel, left and New York Jets head coach Aaron Glenn meet after an NFL football game, Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025, in Foxborough, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa) Credit: AP/Charles Krupa
There is only one thing the Jets want more than to beat the Patriots on Sunday.
They of course want to be the Patriots.
They want to become the team New England has so quickly evolved into, making the fast leap from four wins in each of the past two seasons to 12 so far this year, the latest allowing them to clinch a playoff spot while a division title and a possible postseason bye still remain out there for them to achieve. The Jets’ three wins this season at least has them on track for that kind of a flip. New England’s season allows them to dream about their own prospects for 2026 and Sunday’s game against them is yet another opportunity to get an up-close look at how they managed their alchemy.
“With any team you take a look and see what was their process as far as getting it turned,” Jets coach Aaron Glenn said on Monday.
Unfortunately for the Jets, there aren’t many parallels beyond the woeful record and the aspirations.
The two biggest keys to New England’s success have been the arrival of coach Mike Vrabel and the growth of second-year quarterback Drake Maye. The Jets probably won’t be able to replicate either of those.
Their quarterback of the future remains out there somewhere. That will mean either starting over with a rookie or plugging the hole temporarily with a veteran from the league’s recycling bin. They’ve already tried the latter approach with Justin Fields this season and gotten nothing from it so the draft is looking more and more like their best option. It shouldn’t be too hard to find better quarterback play than the paltry production the Jets have gotten this season, but in either of the above cases it probably precludes them from building with and around a young player the way the Patriots and Maye did from their first to second seasons together.
And as far as the magic touch Vrabel has brought to the Pats, well, Glenn should be careful not to speak too highly of that. It might put ideas into the head of owner Woody Johnson. It wasn’t Vrabel who was part of last year’s four-win disappointment, it was Jerod Mayo, the one-and-done experiment with a popular former first-round draft pick who was given a chance as a first-time coach and flopped. At this point in his career Glenn would seem to have more in common with Mayo, the ailment of the 2024 Patriots, than Vrabel, their medicine in 2025.
None of these differences even approaches the obvious one, the foundation of fairly recent success that New England had and the Jets decidedly have not. Before this season those poor Patriots hadn’t been to the postseason since 2021. Can you imagine such a long and dreadful three-season stretch? How ever did they manage? The Jets meanwhile haven’t been to the playoffs since 2010 and hold the longest current streak without a postseason appearance in the four major North American pro sports. Simply put: The Patriots’ success this season is not so much a complete U-turn for the franchise as it is a course correction from a blip of failure to return to their established normal. And with the Jets we all know what their established normal is.
Still, there are a few hints and tips the Jets might be able to glean from their most hated and envied division rival. Glenn mentioned those, too.
“I thought they did a really good job in the offseason identifying the guys they wanted and brought to their team,” he said. “And I though Vrabel did a really good job of getting his staff the way he wanted.”
Those are undoubtedly areas where the Jets can try to mimic the Patriots. Glenn and general manager Darren Mougey have already started to pick the weeds from their roster and in the coming months they’ll have a chance to add their kinds of players through the draft and free agency.
“We still have a lot of things you have to go through as far as making sure that everybody understands exactly what you are trying to accomplish, what type of team do you want to be,” Glenn said. “Between me and Moug, we have to continue to [look at] players that we want.”
As far as the coaching staff, there is little doubt Glenn has already learned the importance of those hires having just recently fired defensive coordinator Steve Wilks. Having someone like Wilks who had served as a head coach previously to help Glenn through his rookie season may have seemed important back in January when the hire was made, but that role won’t be necessary in Year Two. Having someone who can run Glenn’s vision of the defense will be. It may wind up being Glenn himself if he decides to take over the play-calling. However it happens, Glenn is surely going to make changes among the coaches.
Glenn continues to stress that the Jets have made strides this season even though he admits they have been mostly “in-house” and hard to see from the outside.
“It’s gonna be a tough road and we knew that, but we know exactly what we’re doing and we have a plan,” he said.
OK. Let’s just hope it doesn’t look like the plan the Patriots have used to get where they are. Trying to copy New England will only set the Jets back further from them.
The Jets may be where the Patriots were a year ago in terms of their record, but that’s where the resemblances end.
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.
