After the Jets were blown out by the Patriots on Sunday, their head coach Aaron Glenn had a pointed answer for why the game turned out to be a 42-10 mismatch.
“I always talk about how we come out when we play with effort,” Glenn said. “Today was probably the one time I feel like our effort wasn’t as good as I would want it to be. I didn’t think the effort was where it needs to be.”
Criticizing a team’s effort doesn’t reflect well on players and it doesn’t reflect well on the coaches who are supposed to be inspiring the kind of commitment that makes motivation the least of a team’s concerns. On Monday, Glenn walked back those comments in a press conference opening statement by saying film review showed him “effort was not the issue” and then followed up on that reflection in response to a question about what he saw on film.
“You saw our guys; they were running on and off the field the whole time,” Glenn said, via a transcript from the team. “Man, it was nothing about them that they were throwing up the white flag and they were quitting. So, to me, that’s the one thing that I really wanted to look at and see how that was. Again, schematically were there some things that were challenging? Absolutely. But again, our guys did not quit. I mean, they were running to the ball. They were trying to defend the pass. They were doing all those things they need to do to try to win that game, and that was evident when you just go back and watch the game. And again, watching it twice that really showed up.”
Glenn’s team was outscored by 107 points in four December losses, which doesn’t say much for the scheme, effort or anything else that Glenn has put in place during his first season with the Jets. Assuming he’s back for a second season, there will need to be improvements across the board for his run to go much further.