Woody Johnson did not fire a coach mid-season for the first 24 years of his ownership. Then, he did it to Robert Saleh five games into 2024. Will Aaron Glenn be the next New York Jets’ head coach to lose his job mid-season?
On the latest episode of PFSN’s “Football Debate Club,” Dalton Wasserman and Ian Cummings were split on whether Glenn lasts to Thanksgiving. Wasserman bet that he does, while Cummings took the other side.
Jets HC Aaron Glenn Won’t Get a Long Leash
Cummings built his “no” around the owner’s history.
“Owners are volatile creatures, and [Johnson] has oscillated between giving more and less patience over his time in New York,” Cummings said. “He gave Todd Bowles four years, Adam [Gase] two years, Robert [Saleh] three and a half years, and then Aaron Glenn is entering his second year.”
The Saleh precedent is the one that matters. The Jets had not made an in-season coaching change since Lou Holtz resigned in December 1976. They survived the 1-15 Rich Kotite season, the 0-13 start under Gase, and a midseason groundswell under Bowles in 2018 without pulling the trigger. Johnson broke that pattern in October 2024.
Glenn left a worse aftertaste than Saleh did. His Jets went 3-14, lost their final five games by at least 23 points apiece (an NFL record), became the first team in NFL history to record 0 defensive interceptions across 17 games, and bottomed out with a minus-107 December point differential (the worst single month in NFL history). He fired his defensive coordinator and seven assistants, hired offensive coordinator Frank Reich, and took over defensive play-calling himself. It’s a major reset, and now he’s facing a ton of pressure in Year 2.
Glenn signed a five-year, $12 million-per-year deal in January 2025 that runs through 2029. Firing him after Year 1 would have cost Johnson $40 million or more, and that number was likely a significant reason Glenn kept the job. Patience purchased that way does not extend indefinitely.
“He has to win them over in that early stretch,” Cummings said. “If he doesn’t, he’s gone.”
Glenn opens the season against Saleh and the Titans. Then the schedule hands him the NFC North in three straight weeks: the Packers, Lions, Bears. Four of the next seven feature AFC West opponents, with a Buffalo home game in Week 10 and a trip to the Chargers in Week 11 the Sunday before Thanksgiving. By the time the Jets hit late November, they are 11 games into a slate that produced six teams with winning records in 2025.
A 2-9 or 3-8 record at that mark would mirror last year. It would also slot neatly into the reset Cummings flagged on the podcast. New York owns three first-round picks in the 2027 draft, a class evaluators around the league view as deeper at quarterback than 2026. A new staff hired with synergy around a 2027 franchise QB is the move that has been sitting in the front office’s back pocket since the trade deadline.
“Even if they don’t win a ton of games, if they look competitive, I think he’ll still be the head coach through Thanksgiving,” Wasserman said.
“Look competitive” is doing a lot of work. The same roster looked competitive through five one-score losses in a 0-7 start last year. That stretch did not save the season then, and it is not clear why it would save Glenn’s job now.
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The outcome is binary the moment the early returns are in. If the Jets are 4-7 at Thanksgiving and the games look respectable, the conversation never starts. If they are 1-10 with another no-show on a national broadcast, Johnson already has a playbook.
