Aaron Glenn Battles Jets Panic as Justin Fields Injury Scare Stirs Nightmares

Ralph Vacchiano

NFL Reporter

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — When news about the New York Jets flashes out across the media world, there’s not a single Jets fan on the planet who thinks “Fantastic! I’m sure this will be good!”

Anyone who’s followed the team for more than a minute knows the drill: Hold your breath, brace for the worst, and assume it’s worse than you think.

That, of course, is what happened on Thursday morning when Justin Fields, the Jets’ latest quarterback hopeful, limped off the field on the second day of training camp and was carted to the locker room. As it turns out, he’s officially day to day with a dislocated toe on his right foot, having “avoided serious injury,” according to the team. And even if the QB has to miss some practice time or preseason games, a source said he should be ready for Week 1.

Still, that couldn’t stop the flashbacks to injuries far more severe. Aaron Rodgers tearing his Achilles on the fourth play of the 2023 season. Zach Wilson injuring his knee in a 2022 preseason game. Geno Smith getting his jaw broken by a teammate in the summer of 2015. Mark Sanchez’s separated shoulder in the last preseason game of 2013. And for the older crowd, there were nightmares of Chad Pennington breaking his wrist in the 2003 preseason and Vinny Testaverde tearing his Achilles in Week 1 of the 1999 season.

Never mind that Fields’ injury doesn’t seem nearly as bad as any of those (though feel free to keep holding that breath until the Jets make it official). That’s what new head coach Aaron Glenn faces as he tries to change the culture of this doomed franchise. He’s battling 50 years of muscle memory with a fan base that is perpetually kicked in the groin. Every setback feels like Armageddon. Every misstep seems to set up a catastrophic fall.

And every breaking news alert, especially when it comes to injuries, is a thunderclap from the blackest of clouds. It leads everyone — fans, media, and a whole lot of people inside the seemingly cursed organization — to scream “Here we go again!” while wondering what they ever did to deserve a miserable fate like this.

How is Glenn supposed to stem the tide while facing historical, stubborn, angst-ridden headwinds like that?

“Because I’ve been there and done that,” said the 53-year-old coach who spent the first eight years of his playing career experiencing the pain of being Jet firsthand. “I understand how this league is. I understand how social media starts to take over and everybody starts to panic. The one thing I would say is we have a number of men in that locker room that want to win, and we have a number of men in that locker room that are learning how to win.

“It’s my job to make sure I push that over the edge.”

OK, that’s probably not the best metaphor for a franchise and fan base that has spent decades falling over the edge like an endless loop of Wily E. Coyote cartoons. But the edge Glenn is talking about is the one where everyone gets over a bad experience and realizes there’s still a pathway to survival. It’s a lesson he learned the hard way in Detroit last season when, as the Lions defensive coordinator, he lost a small army of key players, including Aidan Hutchinson, one of the best pass rushers in the league, in Week 5, and still helped his team reach the NFC Championship Game.

Of course, Glenn also knows that injuries to a starting quarterback just hit differently for this franchise. The Jets have been searching for their next great one since Joe Namath left town in the 1970s. Every time they think they’ve found their new savior, the Roadrunner drops an anvil on their heads.

“I understand the outside noise,” Glenn said. “I understand what the fans go through. I understand what [the media] goes through. But it’s really early. It’s really early. And we have a lot of time. So we’re going to focus on that. We’re going to focus on every day. And we’re going to focus on what we do on the grass. And that’s going to take care of everything we need.”

Sure. But while his players may buy that, one look at social media on Thursday morning made it clear fans aren’t ready to embrace that ideal. And, based on a few early afternoon conversations with current Jets employees, the franchise isn’t quite ready to embrace the idea that everything will be fine either.

But Glenn is trying. It was probably not a coincidence that after he began his press conference on Thursday with an update on Fields, he quickly pivoted, unprompted, to praising his backup quarterback, Tyrod Taylor. And he insisted that if he had to put his team in Taylor’s hands for an extended period, “We’re all good.”

Veteran backup QB Tyrod Taylor would be the next man up for the Jets if Justin Fields’ injury lingers into the regular season. (Photo by Luke Hales/Getty Images)

He might be right — clearly he wanted everyone to believe that. But that doesn’t change the reality that things have never really been fine around the Jets — at least not completely. When good things do happen, it always feels like there will be a price to pay eventually. And when the franchise is ready to exhale, reset and embrace excitement about the future, it still feels like the team is stuck in a horror movie with a masked man with a chainsaw watching in the shadows just a few feet away.

That’s the real challenge for Glenn. He not only has to change the culture of the franchise, he has to change its heart and soul and nerves. It sure would help if Fields recovers from his dislocated toe quickly, so the coach could say “See? Sometimes the best-case scenarios really do come true.”

But these are the Jets, so what are the chances of that actually happening? There’s an old saying: Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. The Jets don’t know a whole lot about the first part of that sentence. But for more than 50 years, everyone associated with this franchise has had the second part down pat.

Ralph Vacchiano is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He spent the previous six years covering the Giants and Jets for SNY TV in New York, and before that, 16 years covering the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. Follow him on Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.

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