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Fascinating stuff.
The information SI’s Albert Breer has about the thinking of Jets owner is tremendous reporting.
Nobody, I repeat, nobody, is as plugged into the thinking of Jets owners than Breer.
On his podcast on January 1, he offered some guidance on what is going on with the Jets, current sitting at 3-13, and who just wrraped up the worst NFL December ever with a point differential of (-107).
First off, he announced that firing head coach Aaron Glenn was never a consideration.
“It’s not something that owners have really even discussed on the idea of moving on from Aaron Glenn after one year,” Breer said on his podcast. “My understanding is the plan is to have Aaron Glenn as the head coach and to have Darren Mougey back as the GM in 2026.”
He went on to explain the Jets ownership’s thinking this season, Glenn and Mougey’s first in Florham Park.
“I think you are going to see in the way the Jets have operated over the course of this year it was not a thought in his mind because they are doing so many things with a big picture perspective,” Breer said. “They had a core of players that that group inherited from the previous regime and that core was seen by ownership as a relatively short core, one that you can you can win with pretty quickly and ownership green-lighted the trades of Quinnen Williams and Sauce Gardner and basically deconstructed some of what was already built there.”
What had been “built there” led to a 1-7 start with Williams and Gardner on the team.
But according to Breer, if you are going ot make those kinds of trades and acquire valuable draft capital, you don’t fire the coach and GM who made those trades after one year.
“I don’t think you are [firing them] if you aren’t planning on going forward with this long-term vision that Mougey and Glenn have for the team – they are going to have a lot of assets moving forward,” Breer said. “Two first-round picks in 2026, and three first round picks in 2027.”
And here is some absolutely fascinating insight into how Jets ownership viewed the team’s QB situation in 2025.
“I think now so much of the focus goes to fixing the quarterback position because this is something they discussed, and ownership did not want to press the quarterback thing on their new guys in 2025 because of who was available last off-season,” Breer said. “They did not view it as a rich quarterback market. We can look back at that and argue that. They did not view the quarterback market as having a lot of answers. They are going to do a lot to get it right over the next couple of off-seasons.”
That is remarkable reporting. It really is.
Think about what he is saying.
He’s basically saying that Jets ownership gave the new regime a mulligan on the QB front in 2025.
But some might wonder how the owner felt about the new brass giving Justin Fields, who entered free agency last off-season with a 14-30 record, a two-year deal for $40 million with $30 million guaranteed.
If you don’t think that there are great options out there, why spend that kind of money to fill the role in 2025?
Why not give a QB the kind of deal Mac Jones got from San Francisco, two-years, $10 million, or Daniel Jones got from Indianapolis, one-year, $14 million?
That Fields contract seemed a tad profligate.
“I’m sure they [Pittsburgh] didn’t expect him [Fields] to get that kind of offer,” long-time Steelers insider Gerry Dulac said on NFL Network in March, 2025. “The guy won 10 games in three years in Chicago and played six games last year. That is not a quality body of work to get a $40 million dollar two-year deal, but that is what we see in free agency. That is what we see from teams like the Jets and the [Cleveland] Browns who make decisions like that.”
We had Dulac on a show I co-hosted on SiriusXM NFL Radio on Thursday, and he said, if the Steelers had brought back Fields, it would not have been for big money AND it would have been to be the #2 QB.
So if ownership “did not want to press the quarterback thing on their new guys in 2025 because of who was available last off-season” and “they did not view it as a rich quarterback market,” why give Fields that kind of money?
Glenn has never been asked about the largesse of the Fields contract. He would have in a bygone era of journalism, but not now.
But hat-tip to Breer for his reporting this week about the Jets. It’s been exceptional, starting with this nugget from an article on January 31:
“Here’s the reality of the Jets’ situation: There has been no discussion at the upper reaches of the organization about moving on from Aaron Glenn after one year.”
January 2, 2026
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