FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — Breece Hall parked his car out front and escaped before anyone in the media could see him. Garrett Wilson never showed up in the locker room during the two hours reporters were present, but not many others were around either. Jamien Sherwood never came through, nor did Alijah Vera-Tucker, Justin Fields, Tyrod Taylor, Quincy Williams, Jermaine Johnson, Armand Membou or Will McDonald.
Oversized trash bags full of gear, packed up for the summer, lined some of the locker room, but much of it had already been cleared out by Monday afternoon.
Brady Cook passed through to shake hands with a few media members, but nobody stopped him for an interview. The few who did speak — center Josh Myers, defensive tackle Harrison Phillips, tight end Jeremy Ruckert and guard John Simpson — were the same handful of players who made themselves available throughout this season when many of their more notable teammates weren’t as willing to speak. Often, it was hard to blame them — what is there left to say after a 3-14 season?
Monday was the time to pack up and go home. To move on. To get out of Dodge. The players packed up their lockers and conducted exit interviews with head coach Aaron Glenn. There was a brief team meeting.
And then most of them rushed for the exits. They can’t get away from this season soon enough. Most of them anyway.
“As a competitor, I don’t want the season to be over,” Simpson said. “As tough and as difficult as it was, just taking the field with these guys each and every week is something I don’t want to be over. Obviously, the record was what it was. But just taking the field with these guys is something I’m going to miss for sure.”
The truth is, for much of the past month, it felt like much of this roster already had their bags packed. That’s less on them than on the feeling the organization created when it traded away two of its stars (Sauce Gardner, Quinnen Williams) and waved the white flag on the season just after Halloween. At that point, the Jets were 1-7. They wouldn’t have kept Cook, an undrafted rookie quarterback, in the starting lineup for the last four games if the goal was to win any of them — especially once Taylor was healthy enough to play.
But that stretch will be nothing more than a footnote in history, one of the worst you’ll ever see from an organization that has played a lot of bad football over the last few decades. What matters now is what happens next. How this organization responds. How Glenn responds.
Glenn will be back. That was never in doubt, not when they started 0-7, and not even when they ended the season on a five-game losing streak with a point differential of negative-134 — the first NFL team to lose five consecutive games by at least 23 points.
“That’s a terrible statistic over a span of time that nobody in this organization wants to have their name affiliated with — and unfortunately, we do,” Phillips said. “My hand is in that.”
By most accounts, at least the ones from players who were willing to give them, there is still plenty of belief in Glenn in the locker room.
“Obviously, disappointed in the way the whole thing went,” Myers said. “Not at all how we wanted it to go. I believe in AG and everything that he’s preached. I’ve been around enough good leaders to know that he’s a great one. I trust that we’re going to come back and have a great season next year.”
Trust.
There’s that word again. That’s a commodity that doesn’t last long around here, and there’s a reason for that, the old cliché: Trust is earned, not given. Glenn has a long way to go before he can regain the trust of a fan base that doesn’t appear to have much belief in him anymore.
His introductory news conference statement, saying, “We’re the New York Jets. We’re built for this s—” felt like a rallying cry when he said it. “Put on your seat belts and get ready for the ride.”
Glenn was boastful during training camp, defiant when asked about the training-camp struggles of his quarterback (Fields), struggles that carried into the season and only got worse. He emphasized how the biggest difference in the development of this roster would come from coaching — a clear shot at the previous staff. But few returning players on the roster truly progressed beyond what they were when he arrived, and many key players — Sherwood, McDonald, Johnson and Williams in particular — regressed.
“This season is on me,” Glenn said Sunday after a 35-8 road loss to the Buffalo Bills. (Glenn and general manager Darren Mougey will speak to the media on Tuesday at the Jets facility. Owner Woody Johnson isn’t expected to speak.)
When the question was posed about whether he can point to anything from this season to give people from the outside confidence in what he’s building, his response reached back for that one word: Trust.
“There’s gotta be trust, there’s gotta be faith,” Glenn said. “I’ve been here, done that, I just know myself. Hopefully, the fans know that. I understand this season was not the way everyone wanted it to go, but again, please don’t let go of the rope. Just trust me and have faith in what we’re doing.”
Glenn would do well to retire that phrase, about not letting go of the rope. That rope is on the verge of snapping in half with an impatient fan base. The playoff-less streak has now reached 15 years, and it would be hard to convince anyone it won’t reach 16 a year from now. There’s only been one winning season during that entire stretch — and a lot of coaches asking for patience.
“For 15 years I get your frustrations, but for us new people to the organization, it’s our first year and you gotta give us some grace,” Phillips said. “If we have this same conversation, you can ask me this question next year and I’ll be able to have a more direct answer to the fans. But for now, it’s year one. There’s so much s— we had to figure out. Give us the next eight months of the offseason, let us go out there and try to put our best foot forward next season.”
Glenn promised this Jets team would be a team the fans would be proud of. There’s not much for fans to hang their hat on right now. Wholesale changes are coming — the Jets will need new starters — at minimum — at quarterback, wide receiver, linebacker and safety. They will need them at running back and left guard, depending on what happens in free agency with Hall, Simpson and Vera-Tucker.
And, frankly, after the Jets’ defensive performance — they allowed the second-most points in team history — nobody should feel safe in their starting roles heading into 2026. They’ll hire a new defensive coordinator, and likely flush out some of their position coaches and replace them with new ones.
The Jets are loaded up with two first-round picks, two second-round picks and nearly $90 million in cap space. There are avenues to improving the roster, though no guarantee Glenn and Mougey will make the right moves — or, even if they do, that Glenn will develop the players they add. He did that as the Lions’ defensive coordinator as general manager Brad Holmes loaded up his defense with talented players, largely through the NFL Draft. But Glenn is not a defensive coordinator anymore — he is the head coach, and the Jets defense was one of the worst in team history.
There is something to be said, though, about the players still believing in his message. That nobody ever even really hinted at unhappiness, at least not publicly, other than one player (defensive tackle Quinnen Williams) who requested and received a trade. The locker room didn’t fracture. Players like Simpson, a pending free agent, want to return. That’s something.
“I just believe in AG,” Johnson said Sunday. “He called me into his office, and he said, ‘Do you got me?’ I said, ‘I got you.’ And then he said, ‘Then I got you.’ It’s as simple as that. In the NFL, you can lose what’s important: relationships. That’s where my head is. I gave him my word and he gave me his word, and it’s as simple as that. I’m going to put my all into coach AG and his vision.”
Added Simpson on Monday: “His message is clear. I want to be a part of something like that. I want to help this program get on its feet. That’s the reason they brought me in in the first place. Obviously, we haven’t been able to do that the last two years, but I do think this thing is going to take off, so I want to be part of something like that.”
Maybe the players believe in what he’s saying. But the fans aren’t close to being sold.
