The week between the end of the conference championship games and the Super Bowl will be anything but quiet around 1 Jets Drive and the entire NFL, for that matter. A number of teams are vetting head-coaching and coordinator candidates while Jets' GM Darren Mougey and HC Aaron Glenn are laser-focused on landing a new defensive coordinator as a top priority.

NFL Network's Brian Baldinger sat down with team reporter Eric Allen on an edition of "The Official Jets Podcast" and cast his expert eyes on the field of available men. The Jets have performed virtual interviews with eight potential DCs (one of them, Mathieu Araujo, recently reportedly signed on with Jacksonville) and the candidate list will shorten for in-person interviews.

Wink Martindale, along with Jim Leonhard, the defensive pass game coordinator and assistant head coach for the Denver Broncos, were two men Baldinger put at the top of his evolving list as possible perfect fits for the Green & White.

Jim Leonhard: Excelled Playing for the Jets
Leonhard excelled as the defensive backs coach in 2016 at Wisconsin (where he also starred (2001-04), as a player for the Jets (2009-11) and for five other NFL teams. His season as the Broncos' defensive pass game coordinator and assistant head coach ended on Sunday in Denver's loss in the AFC Championship game.

"Just today, I was talking to a scout of the Broncos, and his name came up. He was coaching the defense at University of Wisconsin, and literally, from the day he left, that program has gone down. Nobody trained linebackers the way the University of Wisconsin did, going back to T.J. Watt. Just go through all these guys, Nick Herbig, Leo Chenal. You go through a list of these guys in this league, they're all trained under Jim in Wisconsin at some point. Look at that secondary, that defense under Vance Joseph is talented. They led the league in sacks. You can't lead the league in sacks if you're not covering on the back end. And so I think Jim Leonhard, he'd get a great deal of attention from me. I know he's a good teacher. ... He's been a big part of that turnaround there in Denver."

Wink Martindale: "I've Been a Wink Fan a Long, Long Time'
"They have a guy there, the New York Giants, Dexter Lawrence, big guy, 360 pounds, and he really didn't do much his first two or three years in the league. And Wink [the Giants' DC 2022-23] challenged him, and he said, 'if you're not in the Pro Bowl, it's my fault. I'm going to get it out of you.' And he [Lawrence] turned his whole career around under Wink Martindale. If I have any question about any a player coming out of the Big Ten, I call Wink [Michigan's DC the past two years] because he's been there for a couple years now, but even in the NFL, I would just ask him about anything that I see, a trend, a player, whatever, he would always get back to me. And I don't do this with a lot of guys, but I have a good relationship with Wink. That guy is a born defensive coordinator. He is literally about as close to Rex (Ryan) as there is in football right now."