There has been plenty of excitement over the Jets’ hire for head coach, including from one person who had previously been critical of a Jets coordinator.
Broncos head coach Sean Payton congratulated Aaron Glenn on social media after the announcement that the Lions defensive coordinator had gotten the vacant Jets gig.
“Congratulations, AG! Much Deserved,” he wrote Wednesday on X.
Glenn was Payton’s defensive backs coach with the Saints from 2016-20.
Payton had famously taken shots at Jets offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett after he took over the head coaching job in Denver — a role Hackett had been fired from — in 2023 while also taking a jab at the Jets as a whole.
Payton called the job that Hackett did with the Broncos “one of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the NFL” and had said during an interview with USA Today that with “everything I heard about last season, we’re doing the opposite.”
In other comments that Payton made in the interview, he also seemed to take aim at the Jets for their inclusion on “Hard Knocks” that summer.
“We’re not doing any of that. The Jets did that this year,” he said. “You watch. ‘Hard Knocks,’ all of it. I can see it coming. Remember when [former Washington owner] Dan Snyder put that Dream Team together? I was at the Giants [in 2000]. I was a young coach. I thought, ‘How are we going to compete with them? Deion [Sanders is] there now.’ That team won eight games or whatever. So, listen … just put the work in.”
The comment irked some Jets players, but then-head coach Robert Saleh avoided commenting on the issue.
The Jets announced on Wednesday that they had hired Glenn, who had played for the team for eight seasons, making him the organization’s 19th full-time head coach.
The hire has been praised by a number of former members of the organization, including former safety Victor Green and receiver Keyshawn Johnson.
“Turnaround, man,” Green said. “I really think ‘A.G.’ is the guy to turn this thing around. I know that head coach is in him now. He’s there. He has it.”
