Back around Thanksgiving, when the New York Jets were first starting their search for their next head coach, Mike Tannenbaum -- the former Jets general manager who founded The 33rd Team, a football think tank which was retained to consult on the search -- visited Bill Parcells at his winter home in Jupiter, Florida.
Tannenbaum worked for Parcells at the Jets in the late 1990s, and the Hall of Fame coach -- who won two Super Bowls for the New York Giants, took over the Jets after a 1-15 season and, by the end of his second season, pushed them to the AFC Championship Game -- remains a trusted advisor.
Tannenbaum asked Parcells whom he would be thinking about if he had to hire a head coach.
"I'd start with Aaron Glenn," Parcells told him.
The Jets did end up with Glenn as their new head coach. The path from Parcells' recommendation to Monday's press conference was far from a straight line, however.
The search for the head coach and general manager Darren Mougey took nearly two months, the long lead time a luxury afforded the Jets by the dismissal of coach Robert Saleh and general manager Joe Douglas during the season. Most NFL searches are conducted like speed dating. Background checks might be done furtively, before the sitting head coaches and general managers are dismissed. Much of the work, including interviews, is jammed into a few weeks that start at the end of the regular season, when most outgoing coaches and general managers are fired.
The Jets made good use of the extra time they had, doing critical background checks before they were able to start talking to candidates. The team has sought outside help when filling previous openings (using the consulting firm Korn/Ferry when hiring GM John Idzik in 2013 and ex-GMs Charley Casserly and Ron Wolf when hiring GM Mike Maccagnan and coach Todd Bowles in 2015), but this year's coach and GM searches were still, in scope and thoroughness, unlike any that the Jets had conducted before, much more akin to searches for corporate executives than for sports bosses. They hope the results are unlike anything they've gotten recently, too. The Jets last made the playoffs in 2010. They've had five coaches since then, including Jeff Ulbrich, who was the interim coach after Saleh was fired during the 2024 season.
"We feel like the others didn't really work," Jets president Hymie Elhai said this week. "It took some moments of self-reflection to think about things, how we can improve it and do it differently."
The last time the Jets did a head-coaching search, following the 2020 season, the only people involved were Christopher Johnson (the vice chair who was the CEO while his brother, Woody, was serving as an ambassador in the first Trump Administration), Elhai and Douglas. They hired Saleh.
"It wasn't anywhere near as thorough," Christopher Johnson said.
Woody, too, identified mistakes that had been made. For one, he had not been as heavily involved as he now believes owners should be in searches. He sat in on every head-coaching interview this time.
"This is a modern process, whether you're looking for a president of Harvard or a coach," Woody Johnson said.
Here, according to those with firsthand knowledge of the search, is what they did to land Glenn as their next head coach.
After The 33rd Team was hired, there was an early meeting with Woody Johnson that included Tannenbaum and Elhai and a few other close advisors. The question posed to Johnson: You've owned the team a long time, so what's really important to you in a head coach? What do you have to have?
That eventually resulted in a list of key characteristics -- things like leadership, player development, strategic acumen, in-game decision making, managing staff, fit in New York -- that every candidate was judged on. Questions were formulated around those characteristics that were asked of every potential hire. It was a road map that gave the search structure. When the interviews started after the season ended, they were transcribed, and thoughts from the search committee were memorialized, all of it saved in a centrally available location that only a small group of people could access.
But the vetting started long before that. Because Tannenbaum and former Vikings general manager Rick Spielman (who also participated in the process and was involved in the Washington Commanders search last year that resulted in the hiring of Dan Quinn) have spent years in the NFL, they have large Rolodexes and could easily reach out to dozens of people for recommendations. Before the regular season was over, the small search committee (fewer than 10 people in all) had spoken to a total of 300 people from outside current league employment -- agents, media members, support staff, former players and coaches, anybody in the NFL ecosystem the rules allowed them to speak to -- as references for potential head-coaching candidates.
"If we do our process well, it's like a draft: candidates go up and down the board," Tannenbaum said Saturday. "We should react to information as we get it. We didn't want the interview to sway overwhelming data one way or another because, on Zoom, some people might be better on Zooms than others. Our job was to organize and collect as much actionable information as we could. If felt very much like the draft process. Things are going to change throughout the search. People are going to be on the board you didn't expect. We want to get the board ready so when Woody and Christopher come in, they have all the information to make that decision."
Among the other places from which the Jets sought information about head-coaching candidates:
- They spoke to former teammates, former coaches, colleagues on coaching staffs and scouting departments and opponents about the finalists.
- They talked to four former head coaches in the NFL. The coaches were told up front they were not candidates, but the Jets wanted to know what they wish they had known or done better when they were a head coach and what two or three things they would tell ownership to do to help their coaches be successful.
- They watched hours of mic'd-up footage from NFL Films, so that the search members could see and hear for themselves the coaching styles of the candidates during games, in practices and even -- for candidates whose teams had appeared on Hard Knocks -- in meeting rooms.
- Members of the public relations staff watches hours of media availabilities.
- They talked to broadcasters and other members of network production crews who meet with assistant coaches every week in preparation for game broadcasts. They were able to offer nuances from what, the Jets realized, were essentially mini job interviews. How do they command a room? How are they as teachers and presenters of information?
- They tried to understand the psychological profile of a candidate and whether he would have the mental toughness to handle the roller coaster of coaching in New York.
- They used artificial intelligence to analyze the avalanche of data they were getting from interviews and background checks.
Tannenbaum had known Glenn since 1997, when Glenn was the Jets' Pro Bowl cornerback and Tannenbaum started as the team's director of player contracts. In 2012, Glenn returned as a scout, and he told Tannenbaum -- then the team's GM -- he thought he wanted to be a general manager. The team wanted to help him. What Tannenbaum remembered about that conversation was that Glenn was the only former player to ever ask if the team would pay for him to get an M.B.A. The Jets said yes, but after that, Glenn switched to coaching and began his long climb to the top, which included stints on the coaching staffs of the Cleveland Browns, New Orleans Saints and, most recently, working as defensive coordinator for the Detroit Lions.
One time, Elhai asked Woody Johnson, if he could take any coach from any sport and give that person's attributes to the head coach of the New York Jets, whom would he choose. The two of them agreed: Bill Parcells.
Woody Johnson said that when the process began, he did not have any idea who would wind up with the job. Ultimately it was the person Parcells had mentored all those years -- it was Parcells who told Glenn he had to start as a scout if he eventually wanted to coach -- and recommended to Tannenbaum.
"One thing about this process is, the winning candidate emerges," Woody Johnson said. "I didn't know at the beginning who would emerge. He emerged, and by the end -- they all were very talented -- one was more appropriate and better for the New York Jets. That's the one we picked."
During the search, the Jets talked to more than 20 people from throughout Glenn's career. At the same time, the coach was making clear to the Jets that he wanted their job -- that, because the Jets had lost in that AFC Championship Game that Parcells had led them to, Glenn felt there was unfinished business for him to complete. In the end, the Jets came away thinking Glenn was a unique candidate, someone who, as both a player and coach, had been with teams when they were at their bottom, during rebuilds and, finally, during sustained success. The Jets hope to get that from Glenn, although they acknowledge there are likely to be bumps in the road. Still, two months, they feel, was time well spent for such an important hire.
"This has been the best process," Christopher Johnson said. "I've been through a few of these -- this feels different to me. We really didn't cut any corners. We went the extra mile. I can't wait for football."
