The 2025 season is off to an intriguing start as Week 5 is about to come to a close with no undefeated teams remaining and 31 squads having at least one win under their belt. The only team still searching for their first victory is not a tremendous surprise as the New York Jets have looked abysmal during an 0-5 start, souring Aaron Glenn's homecoming as head coach.
After being a standout corner for the Jets in the 1990s, Glenn shifted to coaching, working his way through the ranks to become a defensive coordinator with Dan Campbell in Detroit, helping the Lions turnaround from laughingstock into NFL powerhouse over the span of four years. Glenn arrived in New York promising to make Jets fans proud of their team again, something that has not happened as the team's play is somehow worse than the underachieving Robert Saleh and Adam Gase-led squads.
No one expected the Jets to make the playoffs this season as the franchise embarked on yet another rebuild virtually guaranteed to extend the franchise's postseason drought to 15 years, which is the longest active drought in North American professional sports. While the team's play on the field is bad, however, there is still a long way to go for Glenn to rank amongst the worst NFL head coaching debuts of all time.
Aaron Glenn has been historically bad, even for a first-year head coach
Glenn made Jets' history by being the first coach in franchise history to start 0-5, breaking a tie with Gase and Lou Holtz for most games into their Jets' tenure without a win. Things didn't end well for either coach as Gase was fired after two seasons while Holtz didn't even make it through the 1976 campaign, resigning with one game left to return to the college ranks.
In terms of recent memory, the most notable bad start for a first-time head coach came in 2007, when Cam Cameron was tasked with leading the Miami Dolphins after Nick Saban bolted for Alabama. Cameron's Dolphins were wretched, going 0-13 before winning their first game, leading to him getting fired at the end of the season.
The positive side for Jets fans is that Glenn has been through this before, serving on Campbell's staff in Detroit while the Lions struggled mightily to shake their losing culture. Detroit started 0-10-1 in Campbell's first year and 1-6 in his second, but they were able to flip a switch and finish strong that season before building into one of the league's new juggernauts.
Several Hall of Fame coaches also struggled in their first stops, with Tony Dungy going 0-5 to begin his tenure in Tampa Bay while Jimmy Johnson struggled through a 1-15 rookie year with Dallas before building the team of the 90s. While it is far too soon to give up on the idea of Glenn being a successful NFL head coach, he will need to see the Jets start improving their quality of play if he wants to avoid the Cameron career path.
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