Nearly five months after taking over as head coach of the New York Jets, Aaron Glenn addressed his team a final time Thursday as the spring season reached its conclusion in Florham Park, NJ.
"Overall, I thought this has been a really good camp for all of us including the coaches," Glenn said moments after the Jets completed their mandatory minicamp. "We had basically our last team meeting this morning and what I wanted to make sure I stressed to the players throughout this whole deal from Phase 1 all the way to Phase 3 is they started creating some habits and some good habits. And as you leave the building, I don't want those habits to go away. I want them to continue to think about those habits. Also throughout this whole deal, it's been about our process and how we want to operate as a team and who we want to be, how we want to do it."
While minicamp was mandatory, Glenn was pleased with the voluntary buy-in from his team in Phases 1 and 2. During Phase 1, the Jets were limited to meetings, strength and conditioning, and rehab. Then the Jets took another step with on-field workouts and the third phase featured OTAs before it wrapped up with three minicamp practices.
"I'm very proud of all those guys," Glenn said. "Overall, I think we had about 91 percent of the guys who were here -- I'm talking about throughout all the phases. I think the best team that I've been around when it comes to that was about 80 percent, so those guys trumped that."
Middle linebacker Jamien Sherwood, the 2024 Curtis Martin Team MVP who signed a multi-year extension with Jets in March, has been encouraged by the start under the new staff.
"I believe in the process," Sherwood said. "Obviously, I can't tell you what tomorrow is going to bring and what it's going to look like, but what we've been able to put on tape, what we've been able to put together and create in this new foundation, to me, it looks good. I believe in all my teammates, I believe in myself and I believe in our coaches. I think we're going to put together a great game plan every week to go out there and compete."
Glenn, who played a pivotal role in the Detroit Lions' turnaround under HC Dan Campbell, has been clear about his expectations for the Green & White.
"I think the players understand exactly what we're trying to accomplish," he said. "But I do understand there is a lot more work to be done. We're ripping pages out of some situations that we want to get better at. We want to create our own narrative, and we want to write our own book. That's what the focus will be going into training camp -- how do we rip the pages out of some situations that we don't like and make sure we start writing the narrative of how are we going to operate throughout the season and throughout training camp, so when it's all said and done, this is going to be a book a lot of people like to read."
Nickel CB Michael Carter II, whose 2024 season was hampered by injury, is happy to be back on the field with his teammates and has enjoyed the new staff's energy throughout the spring.
"AG is super intense," Carter said. "They want the best out of everybody on the team. Hard work out of AG and [defensive coordinator Steve] Wilks is super important, and I wouldn't want it any other way. That's the only way I know and just building that consistency and trying to be consistent day-in and day-out and just being on our details. It's a new system for everybody and I feel like every day we're taking strides to get better and better and learning from our mistakes and not making those same mistakes twice. Ultimately, when we come back for training camp, I feel like we'll be able to hit the ground running because I feel like they prepared us well to go away, still be locked in, know the exact assignments and learn from those mistakes and come back and hit the ground running."
While Thursday signaled the end to the Jets' spring, Glenn is ready to turn up the heat once again when summer football begins in a little over one month.
"I'm looking forward to training camp," he said. "I hate that things are ending now, and we have to take this month off, but I understand. But guns-a-blazing once we get back here and go to training camp."
