Aaron Glenn’s battle-tested past could be the spark Sauce Gardner and NY Jets need

No one can better relate to the plight of current New York Jets star players than Aaron Glenn, the team's new head coach.

He was like Sauce Gardner, Garrett Wilson, Quinnen Williams, and Jermaine Johnson — a star first-round pick who endured nothing but losing his first few years in the NFL with the Jets.

To further illustrate how many miles he walked in the same cleats, Glenn should show his new team arguably his single lowest moment as a player — the infamous fake spike play in an epic meltdown against the Miami Dolphins during Glenn's rookie season — in his first film session.

In 1994, the Jets were 6-5, at home hosting Miami in a first-place clash. New York had jumped out to a 24-6 lead and seemed poised to seize the day. However, as the team had done multiple times during Glenn's rookie year, the Jets blew yet another multiple-score lead, collapsing demoralizingly.

Dan Marino's furious comeback was capped off by a fake spike play that victimized a shaken Jets defense, with Glenn allowing the go-ahead score. It was the stuff of widespread ridicule. It was one of the original 'LOL Jets' moments.

The Jets lost the rest of their games in Glenn's rookie campaign, falling to 6-10. This experience was not dissimilar from the one that current Jets star players endured in 2022 when the team was 7-4 in playoff contention but lost its final six games, dropping to 7-10.

Aaron Glenn is exactly what the NY Jets need

The fall of the 1994 Jets shares many similarities with the current state of the team, but nothing can match the epic proportions in which the franchise collapsed after the "Fake Spike" play.

From that moment through the following two seasons, Glenn witnessed his team lose 33 of its next 37 games (3-13 in 1995 and 1-15 in 1996). The Jets hit rock bottom, and Glenn wondered if his days in green and white were numbered under a new regime headed by Bill Parcells.

Glenn not only survived football hell but also participated in the Jets' ascension from the depths of despair. Parcells changed the Jets' losing culture, which led to arguably the franchise's best run of relevance from 1997 until the Jets' last playoff runs in 2009 and 2010.

Glenn, who played on two of the worst football teams during his era, experienced winning with many of the same teammates down in the dumps with him.

Glenn's lived experience proves to his New York Jets players that a turnaround is not only possible but has also happened before and can happen again.

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