Aaron Glenn woke up around 3:30 a.m. Wednesday, unable to sleep. He picked up his phone and saw a text message from his wife, Devaney.
“Just be AG,” it read.
“That’s who I’m going to be — right, wrong or indifferent,” the new Jets coach said after his first training camp practice. “Nothing’s going to change about how I operate. Nothing’s going to change about the way I think. Man, I was excited.”
The excitement Glenn has brought to the Jets franchise is palpable. After the failed Aaron Rodgers experiment and the messy divorce from Robert Saleh five games into last season, the Jets badly needed a face-lift and that goes beyond fixing up the locker room.
They need the energy that the 53-year-old former Jets cornerback has shown since Woody Johnson hired him in January.
“Authentic,” is how Glenn described himself Wednesday, and it is hard to argue. There is nothing that feels inauthentic about Glenn when you listen to him speak. He can be saltier than a bag of pretzels, but it’s not for show. It’s him.
“Players know a fake when they see one,” Glenn said. “When you’re up there just talking and just spitting things out, they can read through that quickly. They’ve been around sports for a long time. They know a fake when they see one. I’ve always prided myself on being me. Right, wrong or indifferent, this is who I am. Players know that. I think when players see that, it’s easy to buy in.”
On Wednesday, he was all over the practice field as the Jets — his Jets — took the field in Florham Park for their first camp practice. With the word “Grind” written on the back of his sweatshirt, Glenn moved from position group to position group, mostly observing but speaking up at times. He clapped in excitement at a drill by the offensive linemen and then moved with a purposeful stride across the field toward another group.
“This is something I’ve been waiting for for a long time,” Glenn said.
This was a day that was long in the making for the Humble, Texas, native. From when he was a player watching Bill Parcells transform the Jets in 1997 from a laughingstock to a Super Bowl contender in two seasons. From when he was a defensive backs coach watching Sean Payton keep the Saints playing at a high level year after year. And then as a defensive coordinator helping Dan Campbell turn around the Lions.
Glenn said he truly began thinking about how he would operate his own team after his first head coaching interview, back when he was with the Saints.
“That’s when I started to think it’s time for me to start thinking about that,” Glenn said. “I don’t know if it’s going to happen or not, but it’s time for me to start thinking about how I’d do things. I would always just jot down notes. I came to compile a good amount of notes from that time and then the four years in Detroit.”
Glenn has credited Campbell with giving him chances to perform duties that would prepare him for being a head coach like planning training camp.
All of that led to Wednesday morning, when the Jets took the field just after 8. It was a short practice and a far cry from the training camps Glenn experienced as a player, when there was no such thing as a “ramp-up” phase to camp.
Glenn has cleared every hurdle as Jets coach so far, but the scoreboard has not been turned on yet. He is the latest coach to try to turn around the Jets franchise that has not won a division in 23 years, gone 14 straight years without making the playoffs and experienced nine straight losing seasons.
Now, they turn to the man they drafted in the first round in 1994 as the man to turn them into a winner.
“I know what it’s like to be a Jet,” Glenn said. “I know the pain and all the things the fans have been through. I might have been gone from here, but I was never gone in spirit, so I get it. That sticks with me a ton. I understand the pain. I’m hoping, I’m praying, I expect to make the pain go away. I think about that every day.”
