Jets head coach Aaron Glenn’s on-field interview before the start of the second half on Sunday went viral, but Glenn said on Monday that his comments were misinterpreted.
Glenn told Aditi Kinkhabwala of CBS that the team would be ready to go despite being down 17-3 and that “the good thing is we get the ball, we get a chance to go move it and finish.” That was widely interpreted to be Glenn saying that the Jets would receive the kickoff to start the second half, which was not the case, and Glenn said on Monday that he was talking about what would happen after the defense forced a stop.
“No, I actually talked about just the offense,” Glenn said on Monday, via Howie Kussoy of the New York Post. “I think they were talking about sustaining drives, and my conversation with them is when the offense gets the ball back, man, we want to be able to sustain a drive and go score. Then when the defense gets back on, we want to make sure we stop them and get the ball back to our offense. That’s what I was talking about when it comes to that. The conversation was talking about the offense at that time.”
Things actually did work out as Glenn hoped as the Jets forced a punt and then scored on a touchdown pass to rookie wideout Omar Cooper. They would eventually pull within 17-13, but the Patriots went on to win 26-19.
The Jets fell to 5-18 under head coach Aaron Glenn with Sunday’s loss to the Patriots and their play at the end of the first half loomed large in the loss.
New England pushed a 7-3 lead to a 17-3 edge with a field goal and a touchdown sandwiched around a quick three-and-out by the Jets offense. That continued a trend that has been in place since Glenn took over ahead of the 2025 season.
“Yeah, that’s something that—and I think you guys have heard me talk about this before, just the two-minute situation, that we’ve got to get better at that,” Glenn said after the game, via a transcript from the team. “I must say offense and defense, that we have to get better at that. We have to be able to possess the ball more to go ahead and put stress on their defense to try to score points. On defense you’ve got to make sure we stop them when we get that opportunity.”
Per Rich Cimini of ESPN.com, the Jets have been outscored 119-49 in the final two minutes of halves — they traded field goals with New England late in the fourth quarter on Sunday — since Glenn became their coach. That doesn’t include Glenn’s management of the final minute in a Week 2 loss to the Packers as no points were scored while Glenn sat on timeouts rather than push to get the ball back before heading to overtime.
Green Bay would go on to win and the whole package illustrates the situational struggles that have been a hallmark of Glenn’s run with the Jets. His lack of awareness in those moments has angered plenty of Jets fans and they got more fuel for that fire just before the second half got underway on Sunday. In an interview with Aditi Kinkhabwala of CBS, Glenn appeared to believe his team was getting the ball to start the third quarter when it was actually the other way around.
The Patriots didn’t wind up running away with Sunday’s game against the Jets, but they did enough to extend their winning streak to three games.
After a 17-3 halftime lead got whittled down to four points late in the third quarter, Drake Maye connected with tight end Hunter Henry for his third touchdown pass of the game early in the fourth quarter and a field goal with 1:12 to push them to a 26-16 lead.
The Jets kicked a field goal with 32 seconds left to open the door for an onside kick, but the Patriots recovered it to seal a 26-19 win. It looked for a moment like the Jets would recover when the kick went off wide receiver A.J. Brown’s hands, but Pop Douglas bailed out his teammate by falling on the ball.
Maye finished the day 18-of-32 for 235 yards and his numbers would have been better if Brown’s hands were any better on offense than they were on special teams. He had a couple of drops and a couple of other passes he should have caught go incomplete in his return from an ankle injury. It felt at times like the Patriots were forcing the ball his way and things usually worked better when the Patriots went in other directions.
Henry converted some key third downs, Douglas had seven catches and running back Corey Kiner helped close out the game by running 11 times for 57 yards. One of Douglas’s catches went for 40 yards, but he lost a fumble at the end of that play and Kiner got his chance after TreVeyon Henderson was exiled to the bench after he lost a fumble in the third quarter. Those turnovers helped keep the Jets in the game, but Geno Smith threw his first interception of the season in the fourth quarter and their upset hopes were all but squashed when they had to settle for a field goal on their next drive.
The Jets could have helped their chances of getting a win with more pressure on Maye, but the quarterback had a lot of clean pockets over the course of the afternoon. That came despite the losses of right tackle Morgan Moses, right guard Ben Brown, and left guard Alijah Vera-Tucker to injuries over the course of the afternoon. Their status will be something to watch with the Patriots on a short week heading into Thursday’s game against the Bears.
The Jets will try to amp up that part of their game before hosting the Dolphins on Sunday in Week 7.
The Patriots were able to extend their lead over the Jets late in the first half at Gillette Stadium.
After forcing a punt with just over a minute left in the second quarter, the Patriots were able to move the ball inside the Jets’ 9-yard-line on a pass to Pop Douglas that was combined with a roughing the passer call on Jets rookie linebacker David Bailey. A pair of incompletions left the Patriots with one last chance to get the ball into the end zone before halftime and they took advantage of it.
Drake Maye scrambled long enough to find Douglas for a touchdown that pushed the Patriots to a 17-3 lead. New England will also get the ball to start the third quarter.
Maye has not been sacked despite the Patriots losing a pair of offensive linemen to injury. Right tackle Morgan Moses is questionable to return with an ankle injury and left guard Alijah Vera-Tucker has the same designation due to a hamstring injury. Wide receiver Romeo Doubs is also questionable to return after hurting his shoulder while catching Maye’s first touchdown of the day.
The Jets opened the game with a field goal and moved the ball into Patriots territory twice more, but saw both drives end with failed attempts to convert on fourth down. The first was a run out of the shotgun by Braelon Allen and the second was a Geno Smith sneak that came after another shotgun run was thwarted on third down.
That’s why the Jets trail by 14 despite having the ball nearly twice as long as the Patriots through one half of play.
The Jets scored first at Gillette Stadium on Sunday, but the Patriots are now in front.
Drake Maye got plenty of time to throw on a second down and eventually found wide receiver Romeo Doubs in the end zone for a 42-yard touchdown. Doubs wound up staying down after the play and got some medical attention on the field before walking to the sideline with trainers.
The score made it 7-3 Patriots with 4:10 to play in the opening quarter.
The Jets opened the game with a strong drive that appeared to end with rookie wide receiver Omar Cooper’s first career touchdown catch, but Tim Patrick was flagged for offensive pass interference while Geno Smith was scrambling ahead of the throw. The Jets had to settle for a field goal and their second drive went up in smoke thanks to sacks by Milton Williams and Christian Barmore.
