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NFL 2026 NFL Draft Aaron Glenn and Darren Mougey have been through plenty since they were introduced as the Jets' head coach and GM. Ed Mulholland / Getty Images PHOENIX — The New York Jets live in a world of hyperbole, where moments and words get exaggerated beyond the point of their original meaning. Aaron Glenn found that out the hard way. A quote can mean one thing when it comes from any of 31 NFL head coaches. It often carries a different meaning when it comes out of the mouth of the Jets’ head coach. Advertisement When Glenn talks about how excited he is to call plays again and refers to that as his “superpower, ” a tabloid mockingly puts him in a superhero costume on the back page of its sports section. When it looks like Glenn’s eyes are closed during a television broadcast, the world assumes he is sleeping. Glenn can sometimes be a man of hyperbole, Bill Walton in Jets clothing. It’s often not purposeful — it comes from emotion, the excitement he feels when he’s talking about certain topics or ideas. It happened again Tuesday morning. A year ago, the Jets signed Justin Fields and promptly declared him the starter. That might have proven to be a mistake, though the Jets did pay him $40 million — and have since already traded him away for a sixth-round pick. On Tuesday, early in a 35-minute interview session, Glenn was asked about Geno Smith. He declared Smith the no-doubt starter in an interview with NFL Network on Sunday. So why do that again? Because he believes in Smith, he said a couple of days later. “I just feel like he’s the guy that’s going to lead us to the promised land, ” Glenn said. There it is again. Hyperbole. Cue the mockery. It, of course, is on Glenn to understand that words carry more weight when you are an NFL head coach, that everything coming out of his mouth will be hyper-analyzed — and usually not in a positive light. Not when you’re the coach of a Jets team that just went 3-14 and, historically, often finds itself the butt of the joke. Glenn didn’t mean that quote in the way that it’s been interpreted and passed around. He meant another word entirely — a word he used in that NFL Network interview on Sunday. Smith isn’t going to lead the Jets to the “promised land” if that means some form of true NFL glory. This certainly isn’t a Super Bowl team, and it probably isn’t a playoff team either. Though what Glenn believes he can bring them does start with the letter C. Advertisement “There’s no doubt in my mind, ” Glenn said in that interview, “that we brought (in) a competent starter. ” Competence. That’s what the Jets are seeking. Because it’s what they’ve been missing. The first time Glenn saw Darren Mougey, he was sitting at the end of a table with Broncos brass, interviewing Glenn for Denver’s head-coaching job in 2022. Mougey asked Glenn, on the spot, to tell them what his first speech to the team would sound like if he were hired. Glenn did it. Mougey was impressed. They both remembered that when they sat in the same room again last January, Glenn was in the power position this time, interviewing Mougey to see if he was the right fit to be his general manager, to make sure their visions aligned. “When we had a chance to sit and talk, how he saw the team was exactly how I saw it, ” Glenn said. When a new head coach and general manager — especially first-timers — step in, something that’s often overlooked is the quick turnaround from getting hired to having to roster-build immediately. Glenn and Mougey were hired in January and, on the fly, had to build a coaching staff, make a decision on Aaron Rodgers, build a plan for the offseason, attend the NFL Scouting Combine and attack free agency, all while prepping for April’s draft. Glenn and Mougey had never worked with each other before, and they’ve both since admitted they had a lot to learn. Their plan for 2025 didn’t work — certainly not the Fields signing, nor Glenn’s hand-picked coaching staff. They started bad (0-7), ended worse (0-5, featuring the largest margin of defeat in NFL history for a five-game stretch) and finished 3-14. Glenn struggled at times with certain aspects of game management, the defense fell apart, and many players he inherited from the previous staff regressed. In free agency, Mougey made it a priority to get younger — almost exclusively signing players that were younger than 30 — at the expense of having reliable veteran leadership in the locker room. Whatever the plan was last year, Mougey and Glenn crumpled it up and threw it in the trash. Advertisement Glenn fired half his coaching staff, notably hiring new offensive (Frank Reich) and defensive (Brian Duker) coordinators as well as a handful of other position coaches. Glenn did some self-reflection and decided he needed to get back to what got him this job in the first place: play-calling. Glenn has been building the new Jets defense around concepts from his time with the Lions, so it helps to have Duker — who coached with him in Detroit — around to take over when Glenn leaves the room to sit in with Reich and the offense. “Just listening to how Frank wants to do things and the input he’s getting from the other guys has been outstanding, ” Glenn said. This offseason, Mougey and Glenn prioritized proven, veteran, starting-caliber players and leaders, most notably linebacker Demario Davis, defensive tackle David Onyemata and safety Minkah Fitzpatrick. Most of the defensive veterans Glenn and Mougey inherited — Sauce Gardner, Quinnen Williams, Jermaine Johnson, Quincy Williams, among them — have been traded away or left in free agency. “We were the second-youngest team in the league last year, ” Glenn said. “And to be able to have an influx of these veteran guys to be able to teach these guys exactly how the locker room needs to operate, how you finish out games. Guys like Demario, David Onyemata, Minkah … when you start to add guys like that, it only helps what you’re trying to create. All those guys we added in free agency bring a certain level of adult to our team that we need. ” And if Fields was a Powerball ticket, Smith is more of a scratch-off — the winnings might be smaller, but the odds are more in their favor. Smith knows what he’s walking into, considering the conflict that followed him around when he last played for the Jets. But Glenn and Mougey believe he is the right quarterback to lead them back to that land of promise. Back to competence, that is. “Everything, ” Glenn said Tuesday, “was done with intention. ” Advertisement During Glenn’s six years with the Saints, key members of the coaching staff would often travel on the Pro Day circuit together. That group included Glenn and Dan Campbell. The goal was to take everything in together. To watch the drills and sometimes run them. Though the biggest payoff came away from the drills — sitting down for dinner with top prospects, quizzing them in the classroom, getting to know them away from the field, talking to the people at those colleges who knew them best. Glenn and Mougey didn’t have the time to organize such a trip last year, but it was a priority this offseason. So leading up to the owners’ meetings, a contingent that included Glenn, Mougey, Reich, quarterbacks coach Bill Musgrave and others traveled together to various schools — including Ohio State, Miami, Texas Tech and Notre Dame. They hosted dinners with top prospects and conducted private workouts with others — and they’ve already had private workouts and/or dinners with most of this class’ top quarterbacks. They dug in on the top candidates for the No. 2 pick — Ohio State’s Arvell Reese and Texas Tech’s David Bailey, among others. “It was a great week, ” Mougey said. “For me, just to get exposure to some of these players. There were a lot of players we saw, offense, defense, some quarterbacks, and it was a chance to get around the coaches and spend the whole week (with them). It was an opportunity for me to get to know them, have a lot of conversations throughout the week, so I thought it was really productive, and I feel really good about it. ” Glenn called that experience “critical” to their process. “You want to know who you’re bringing into that locker room, ” Glenn said. “Every player we bring in, I want to make sure they fit exactly what we’re trying to do. ” For Glenn and Mougey, it was the next step in their relationship. A good way to find out if two people are compatible is to force them to travel together for a week. It was a lot of time on the road, with a lot of time to chat about things other than football, and to needle and laugh at each other. Glenn and Mougey talked about their wives, their families, their lives. On one of the plane rides, Mougey — he’s 6-foot-5, a little tall for most airplane seats — stretched out his leg and his foot hit Glenn’s foot. “I’m like: Whoa! ” Glenn said, laughing. “That was an argument we got into. ” When they disagree, Glenn and Mougey have said, it’s in a healthy way. If they were trying to find their footing last year, to figure each other’s process out, they feel more in sync now. They speak every day, Glenn said. He leans on Mougey for his opinion on matters of coaching. Mougey leans on him for his opinion on matters of player evaluation and roster transactions. Advertisement “We really communicate at a high level, ” Glenn said. “It’s on every little thing we do, and that’s the type of relationship I wanted with a GM … You want to do that because it brings you closer because we’re in this thing together. We’re in lockstep with everything. ” Mougey often gets praise for the adept way he works the phones and makes trades to improve the Jets roster in cost-effective ways — best exemplified by deals he made for Harrison Phillips, Jowon Briggs and Jarvis Brownlee last year, and Fitzpatrick and T’Vondre Sweat this offseason. He got a draft pick for Fields even though everyone knew the Jets were getting rid of him. He set the Jets up for the future when he secured a boatload of draft capital in exchange for Gardner and Quinnen Williams. He’s made 14 trades involving players since last season, the second-most in the NFL during that stretch. And while Mougey is the one working the phones, Glenn is involved, too. “There’s certain things he has to do that are not in my wheelhouse, ” Glenn said. “When he goes to execute it, he does a really good job of executing the plan and the vision of the team we’re trying to build. And I love every part of that. ” The philosophy is simple, Glenn said: “We love the player, let’s go and get him. ” The goal is simple, too — it starts with a C: competence. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle Zack Rosenblatt is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the New York Jets. Before joining The Athletic, he worked as a staff writer for The Star-Ledger, where he covered the Eagles and Giants. He also covered the Arizona Wildcats for the Arizona Daily Star. He's a graduate of the University of Arizona and is originally from Cherry Hill, N. J. Follow Zack on Twitter @Zack Blatt