Aaron Glenn’s embarrassing halftime mistake against Patriots gives New York Jets fans another reason to question their head coach
Aaron Glenn’s halftime interview during the Jets’ loss to New England featured a baffling mistake that added to growing concerns about the head coach’s attention to detail.
You just can’t make this stuff up. New York Jets coach Aaron Glenn had a halftime moment against the New England Patriots that showed a complete lack of awareness, and it’s going to follow him for a while.
Coming out of the locker room for the second half, Glenn did his usual pre-half interview with CBS sideline reporter Aditi Kinkhabwala. He sounded upbeat about how the Jets would open the third quarter.
“The good thing is we get the ball,” Glenn said.
There was one problem. The Patriots were the team getting the football to start the second half, not the Jets. Per usual, New York found a new way to make headlines for the wrong reasons.
A head coach has to know who’s getting the ball
Now, we’ve seen Glenn struggle with game management before. Time management late in games has been an issue, and so have some of his timeout calls and challenges. Those mistakes frustrate a fan base, but they’re the kind of thing you see from coaches still growing into the job.
This is different. We’ve never seen anything like this from him.
Aaron Glenn is the head football coach. He has to know everything going on in that game, from the personnel on the field to the clock to who is receiving the opening kick of the second half. The fact that he didn’t know, or at least appears not to have known, that New England was getting the ball is ridiculous.
I get it. A football game moves fast, and a coach can get caught up in everything going on around him. It’s easy to forget some stuff in the middle of a game. But halftime is the one stretch where everything slows down. If I’m walking out of that locker room as the head coach, I think I know which team is getting the football. That’s the bare minimum.
This isn’t why the Jets lost
Let’s be fair here. Obviously, this is not why the Jets lost to the Patriots. There are plenty of other reasons New York came up short in this one, such as horrible line play. A coach misspeaking in a sideline interview didn’t decide the outcome.
But it does say something. Little details matter at this level, and the head coach sets the tone for an entire roster. When players see their coach unaware of something this basic, it raises fair questions about how locked in the whole operation is. And when the rest of the league sees it go viral, it doesn’t exactly help a team trying to shed its reputation.
Progress, but this can’t keep happening
The Jets are 2-4. It was a tough loss to New England, but this team is on a better track than it was in Glenn’s first season last year. Obviously, that was an extremely low bar to clear, but progress is progress, and New York has been more competitive.
With that being said, moments like this can’t happen. The Jets can’t put up with stuff like this for much longer, and Glenn can’t afford to keep giving critics easy ammunition. Every slip in time management, every questionable challenge, and now this halftime mix-up starts to stack up when you’re trying to prove you’re the right man for the job.
I think Aaron Glenn is a good defensive coach. I believe he can be a good head coach in this league, and the improvement on the field backs that up at times. But man, stuff like this just makes you have complete doubt in that opinion.
He’s got to get this figured out, though. He has to be locked in for all 60 minutes, halftime included. If he cleans up these lapses, the Jets will keep trending upward. If he doesn’t, moments like this will define his tenure more than the progress will. For now, this was a really bad look.
