With the NFL's free agency feeding frenzy cooling down while next week's draft is heating up, the Jets will take one more step in their 2026 reset in head coach Aaron Glenn's uber-important second season at the Green & White helm with the start of the team's voluntary workout schedule on Monday in Florham Park. All the Jets on the roster so far are feeling the edge and the excitement of taking even a small step like the first gathering of spring.
Just ask someone who's been there a few times over his three Jets incarnations: LB Demario Davis.
"I think AG's preaching all the right messages," Davis said as he prepares to start his next go-round wearing the green and white as his highlight-reel NFL career enters its 15th year. "And it sounds like there's a locker room of guys who have bought into what he's coaching. We're just being brought in to help reinforce that. If anything, use our voices to turn up the volume because at the end of the day, ships go into daylight because you hold on and you hold steady through the storm, and that's all we need to do."
This year's "storm" begins serenely enough with the start for all NFL teams of Phase One and the first two weeks of the program, with activities limited to meetings, strength and conditioning, and physical rehabilitation only.
Phase Two runs for the succeeding three weeks. On-field workouts can include individual and group instruction and drills as well as "perfect-play drills," and drills and plays with offensive players lining up across from offensive players and defensive players lining up across from defensive players, conducted at a walk-through pace. No live contact or team offense vs. team defense drills are permitted.
Finally, Phase Three consists of the last four weeks of the program, during which teams may conduct 10 days of organized team activity or OTAs. No live contact is permitted, but 7-on-7, 9-on-7 and 11-on-11 drills are permitted.
The Jets' OTA workouts are scheduled for May 27-29 and June 1-2, 4 and 8-11, and their Phase Three activities will conclude with a full-squad mandatory minicamp on June 16-18. Next stop after that minicamp: Training camp in July.
Glenn at the NFL Annual League Meeting in Phoenix talked about some of the fruits of self-reflection about last season that he wants to implement this season, with players beginning to feel that focus as soon as Phases Two and Three.
"At practice, for example, there are things I want to do differently. I want to be able to maximize our reps as much as I can and also make sure there's recovery for the players," he said. "There are certain things that we want to push forward, especially now since I'm calling the defense. There are some things like offensively that I want to make sure that we take advantage of, and that's one of the reasons why Frank [Reich, offensive coordinator] was high on the list to be able to understand exactly how is he going to create these matchups that we want to create.
"There are things about messaging with the players that I want to improve on to make sure there's clarity on what we're trying to do and how we're trying to do it. So there's a number of things and those are just a couple examples that I sit back and I look at. And I think every year you want to improve on those things."
Those refinements will start to get filtered in as the Jets prepare to turn things around in the second year of Glenn's tenure. As low-key as the offseason program begins in Phase One, it's another inexorable step forward for all the Jets players, holdovers, new vets and new rookies alike. And it means something special for players who are beginning this phase of the offseason while once again wearing the green and white, like QB Geno Smith and Davis.
"You can already see glimpses of what's being built as the moves that have happened early in the offseason with so much more on the horizon, so I'm really excited to be a part of that," Davis said. "And this is my third time around, but as I come around this time, I come back very different. I come back very purposeful, very clear on vision, and very clear about who I am and this wasn't a happenstance situation. This was a choice, very specific, knowing who I am and who I'm called to be; I knew exactly what I'm stepping into this time around. I know who I am and I know what I bring to a locker room."
And with that heartfelt assessment from a player who inspires through his words, his actions and the history of what he has brought to this team and this league, let the Jets' Offseason Program, Phase One, begin.
