EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Brian Schottenheimer was walking out of an empty visitors locker room at MetLife Stadium with his former employer, the New York Jets, tucked firmly inside his travel bag.
As the offensive coordinator for Rex Ryan’s 2009 and 2010 Jets teams that advanced to the doorstep of unimagined glory, and as the current holder of the most important job in American sports — head coach of the Dallas Cowboys — Schottenheimer was a good person to field the NFL’s most confounding question.
Is Same Old Jets actually a real thing?
“I don’t buy into that because we won here,” Schottenheimer told The Athletic. “S—, we went to back-to-back AFC Championship Games. Some of my best years in coaching were here with the Jets. We had a lot of success and we were right there.
“So no, I don’t think so. I think it just takes time and you need the right leader.”
Schottenheimer made it clear he thinks Aaron Glenn is that leader despite the Cowboys’ 37-22 smackdown of the Jets that, as they say, wasn’t as close as the score indicated. Glenn became the franchise’s first coach to start his career with an 0-5 record, and afterward looked and sounded very little like the January firebrand who seized his introductory news conference by the throat as he promised dramatic and lasting change.
“I’m a big Aaron Glenn fan,” Schottenheimer said. “He’s going to build the right culture. He’s going to get his guys playing the right way. … I believe identity matters, and that’s what Aaron is going to find with this team. We had ground-and-pound and played great defense back then, and that was all Rex’s background from Baltimore.
“The biggest thing you’ve got to do is find an identity, and what’s hard is when you’re not winning. You want to win so the guys buy into what you’re doing.”
Glenn cut return man Xavier Gipson to send a message after his costly fumble against the Pittsburgh Steelers in the season opener, and the Jets got hammered the next week by the Buffalo Bills. Glenn berated his players after their Monday night loss to a winless Miami Dolphins team, and they responded with absolutely no fire against Dallas.
“We’re going to figure this thing out and get out of this hole.”
Jets HC Aaron Glenn speaks on his team’s 0-5 start. pic.twitter.com/lBA3x24Oyp
— FOX Sports: NFL (@NFLonFOX) October 5, 2025
The rookie coach even wore a boxing glove on his right hand in practice to simulate punching a ball out of the running backs’ arms — the Jets had lost a league-worst six fumbles over their first four games — and then Marist Liufau punched the ball out of Breece Hall’s arms with his left hand (no boxing glove required) and tilted the whole afternoon in the Cowboys’ favor.
Nothing Glenn has done looks any different from what Jeff Ulbrich did last year, or from what Robert Saleh did for three-plus years, or from what Adam Gase did for two years before that.
Nothing.
Not a damn thing.
The Jets are going to miss the playoffs for a 15th consecutive season. That is a foregone conclusion.
Also a safe bet: Aaron Glenn, former Jets cornerback and a member of Rich Kotite’s 1-15 team in 1996, had no idea how staggering a burden it is to be the head coach of this team.
Glenn thought he knew, because they all think that when they sign on the Jets’ dotted line. They all believe they’ll be the one to save the S-O-Js from themselves.
Aaron Rodgers thought he would enhance his legacy by winning the franchise’s first championship since Super Bowl III, until he ran smack into the unseen force that reduces all Jets saviors to cowering wrecks.
The other Aaron who ultimately fired him, Mr. Glenn, came in talking tougher than his old mentor, Bill Parcells, who needed only two years with Kotite’s Keystone Cops to make the Jets a legit championship contender. Glenn told his captive audience that it should buckle up “and get ready for the ride.” The new coach conceded there would be challenges but maintained with force, “We’re the freakin’ New York Jets. And we’re built for this s—.”
These Jets aren’t built for anything other than additional misery for their tortured fan base, and it’s clear that reality has hit Glenn like two tons of bricks. He is no longer combative with reporters in news conferences. Losing has tempered his approach. Losing has humbled his extreme faith in his ability to impose his will on this franchise.
Like most Jets coaches before him, Glenn has been diminished by the experience. After the loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 3, he insisted, “We’re not the same team as, like everyone says, ‘Same Old Jets.’”
Nobody had brought up those three vile words. Glenn volunteered them on his own, providing more evidence that he’s feeling the magnitude of the challenge in front of him.
The job only got heavier on this hot and sunny Sunday, when the home team was booed off the field at halftime by the sections of MetLife that weren’t filled with Cowboys fans. The Jets did precious little against the hideous Dallas defense and, on the other side of the ball, allowed scoring drives of 90 and 91 yards. The defense made someone named Ryan Flournoy look like Justin Jefferson, and made history by failing to secure a takeaway for the fifth straight game.
Glenn ripped himself for allowing his team to come undone after Hall’s fumble. “I’ve got to figure out a way to get our guys going when things like that happen,” he said. The coach said his practices “have been damn good,” and that he’ll keep trying his damnedest to carry those Wednesday, Thursday and Friday performances into Sunday.
For perspective, Glenn said he spoke with Hall of Famers Tony Dungy and Jimmy Johnson about their experiences in overcoming failure. He could have asked Sunday’s opponent, Schottenheimer, about the last team to defeat the loserville mentality that seems to shroud this franchise in a London fog. (Note: The Jets play the Denver Broncos in that fog next Sunday.)
“The way we did it was with Rex Ryan’s personality being so big,” Schottenheimer told The Athletic. “Rex did a great job in building the defense, and we got our rookie quarterback, Mark Sanchez, to understand that he could hand off and manage the game. And we had some (playmakers) when Mark grew up.”
Schottenheimer said he had texted Sanchez on Saturday and hadn’t heard back after the former quarterback and current Fox analyst was stabbed during an altercation in Indianapolis and later arrested at the hospital. “Just praying for him,” the Dallas coach said. “I don’t know the whole story; I’m sure it’s all going to come out. He’s a close, close friend.”
If nothing else, it was a reminder that forever football futility isn’t the end of the world … even if it sometimes feels that way for Jets fans.
Perhaps there is some game day hope ahead. Aaron Glenn overcame 1-15 as a player and 0-8 and 0-10-1 as an assistant coach with the Detroit Lions. He remains a good bet to become a good head coach in what he described as his dream job.
But Glenn has found out the hard way that you don’t reverse the fortunes of the New York Jets merely by firing Aaron Rodgers and acting like a tough guy in pressers. You have to push the right human buttons with your players and come up with the right X’s and O’s in your game plan.
Glenn needs to figure out how to do that sooner rather than later. If not, he will become just another guy swallowed whole by the unique experience of being the New York Jets’ head coach.
(Photo: Sarah Stier / Getty Images)
