(Editor’s note: This is excerpted from Mike Sando’s Pick Six of Nov. 10, 2025.)
5. The Jets won Sunday, but has first-year coach Aaron Glenn already lost?
The Jets, fresh off trading defensive starters Sauce Gardner and Quinnen Williams, found one of the least sustainable formulas for winning in their first game without either player, a 27-20 victory over the Cleveland Browns.
Two return touchdowns helped the Jets become the first NFL team since at least 1940 to win with fewer than 170 yards of offense and zero opponent turnovers, per Pro Football Reference.
The 1943 Detroit Lions were the last NFL team to avoid defeat under those circumstances. They settled for a scoreless tie against the Giants.
The point being, even in victory, the Jets remain a team with more questions than answers.
The two huge trades at the deadline gave the Jets ammunition to pursue a new quarterback after this season. Did those moves also suggest the balance of power has shifted within the organization after the team started 0-7 under Glenn, who had driven the decision to swap out Aaron Rodgers for Justin Fields, and who has struggled to make the defense much better?
“They win the offseason with the lack of noise around the program,” an exec from another team said. “They re-signed Sauce, they re-signed Garrett Wilson, they’re ready to roll, and what happens?”
The Jets lost their first seven. Owner Woody Johnson undercut quarterback Justin Fields (and supported Glenn) with dismissive public comments. Glenn struggled with game management. He has bristled when reporters asked questions that annoyed him.
Then came the two huge trades no one saw coming.
Glenn, the clear point person in the organization as a former Jets first-round pick with a strong personality and the advantage of being hired before the GM, Darren Mougey, is in a less favorable position now.
“It’s turning there,” the exec said. “The GM is gonna start putting this team together, and the owner said, ‘Go ahead.’ I don’t think those players would have been traded if they had four or five wins.”
The Gardner and Williams trades suggested Glenn would need a longer runway to succeed. Will Johnson give him that? Will the quarterback decision and Glenn’s alleged handling of Rodgers count as a strike against the coach? It’ll take much longer to evaluate how Mougey uses the five first-round picks the team holds over the next two drafts.
“You would think the GM has a lot of juice now, but that is hard because the owner is always going to be a problem,” the exec said. “That’s the fight that he’s going to be up against.”
