The Jets' first-year coordinators under head coach Aaron Glenn have been through 16/17ths of their first season and got the occasion during their weekly media sessions with reporters Thursday to dish a little on how things have gone with their units. OC Tanner Engstrand's assessment might speak to all three phases of the Jets attack when he said the season "had some really good ups and some downs."
Defensive Coordinator Chris Harris
Harris, of course, did not spend the entire season as the Jets' DC. For the first 15 weeks, he was the Jets' defensive pass game coordinator and DBs coach, before Glenn elevated him to coordinator after Steve Wilks departed following the Jacksonville game. In his third game as DC, also the Jets' season finale at Buffalo, Harris is eager to have his group go out with an impressive showing.
"Oh, man, I have no doubt that our guys are ready," he said. "We talk about it all the time, about being professional athletes. Especially football players —.you only get so many opportunities. And this being our last opportunity, we want to make sure we do everything we can to get our guys prepared, and the guys are going out there playing their butts off, running around, hitting people, and just being assignment-oriented and detail-oriented."
One big/small topic for Harris' DBs and now for his entire defense is the fact that the Jets remain interception-less through 16 games. It's big, of course, since the Jets want to avoid becoming the first pick-less team for an entire season in NFL history, but small in the sense that, as Glenn has said, he'll take any turnover at any time to give the ball back to the offense. But Harris isn't obsessing over the INT issue.
"We're continuing to focus to get takeaways, and they'll come," he said. "Like I've said, this is a bizarre situation, never seen it. But our guys are working hard, so we'll see. I'm excited about the opportunity, though."
Offensive Coordinator Tanner Engstrand
As Aaron Glenn said a day earlier, "I'm proud of the way the guys went about" executing the run game, ranked in the NFL's top 10 all season, while the passing game, ranked 32nd for the past 12 weeks, is one of those "things we're looking at."
Engstrand got to look up close and personal at the O all season, and he said: "There's been some really good things and there's been some things we know we can learn upon. For me, there's definitely things that I look back on and I've reflected on over the last several weeks that maybe I would adjust and do a little bit differently going forward.
"But I think it's been really good. We've got our system in for the most part. There's always going to be more, but I think we have a good foundation of what we're trying to build as a team and as a culture in the building, and how we want to play, and what our brand is. And then we will continue to sharpen that and hone that as we head into the offseason."
Like his defensive counterpart, Engstrand won't alibi anything with the offense, although it could be noted that the Jets have new players, from veterans to free agent rookies, at most skill positions except Breece Hall at RB1.
"You could use that as an excuse, but that's not what we do," he said. "There's a next-man-up mentality at some point and the next guy's going to have to play. We ended up with a little bit of that this year and that's OK. It's our job as coaches to get them ready to play and get out there and have some success and produce on Sundays. And so that was really our full focus when we did get those players in here at the beginning of the year and then in the middle of the year."
Special Teams Coordinator Chris Banjo
Banjo's group was the steady star in the Jets' 2025 universe. K Nick Folk and P Austin McNamara led the kicking department, Isaiah Williams and Kene Nwangwu were the frontmen for the return games, and a band of coverers/blockers in Mykal Walker, ST captain Marcelino McCrary-Ball, Andrew Beck, Isaiah Davis, Isaiah Oliver and others, made energetic contributions.
"Just a great learning experience, honestly," Banjo said of his and his teams' season. "There's definitely been some highs and lows, but for me, just really a blessing. I think that's the biggest word I would use to describe it. It's just been a blessing to be able to work with the people God has allowed me to work with in this building, the players that I've been able to work with.
"I think our players have done a good job just bouncing back mentally, getting ready to finish this thing the right way and just put our brand of tape on display like we have all year, and we're just looking forward to finishing this thing strong.
Banjo said "it's been tremendous" to work with Williams, one of the great NFL bounceback stories this season, from being a September cut to a late-December Pro Bowl second alternate, And he had some special words for his footmen, Folk and McNamara.
"I honestly think this has got to be damn near at the top, if not the top," he said of the kicking tandems he's been around in his coaching career. "We see what we see on the field, right, on gameday, how they're able to perform. But it's just their commitment to excellence, every day at work, their same routine, their same buy-in in terms of what we ask them to do, how we challenge them sometimes and how they're consistently relentless about how they go about it."
