Harrison Phillips just delivered damning indictment of Jets' 2025 roster

The New York Jets' 2025 season was nothing short of a disaster. A season that started with promise, spearheaded by a former franchise player in Aaron Glenn, ended up spiraling out of control by the end of December.

Veteran defensive tackle Harrison Phillips was one of the lone bright spots, specifically on the defense, and provided a guiding light for some of the young players, and seemed to echo Glenn's messaging in the locker room.

Phillips has experienced his fair share of winning, having spent four seasons with the Buffalo Bills and three with the Minnesota Vikings before ultimately getting traded to the Jets in August 2025.

He knows what it takes to build a winning culture, and when asked if he trusts in Glenn's vision to turn things around in New York, he gave a brutally honest answer about what his head coach was working with in 2025.

Harrison Phillips calls Jets' 2025 roster a 'cancerous, truculent group'

Roundtable Sports' Richie Mollura caught up with Phillips on Thursday and asked him why Jets fans should believe in Glenn despite a poor first year on the job.

"I think AG inherited a very cancerous, truculent group, top to bottom, and...it's not individual people's fault. I was there for one season, it was a very difficult season, and I almost wanted to waver on some of...my optimism. I think AG's mindset...to deal with what we had to deal with this season...was super cool to see. "

Harrison Phillips

Phillips, who's an eight-year veteran, clearly has some idea of what works in the NFL and what doesn't, so it's cool to see him backing up a head coach he's only played one season for.

The quote about the 2025 roster is brutal, but honest. But it makes sense considering what the Jets decided to do at the trade deadline in early November.

After starting the season 1-7, Glenn and general manager Darren Mougey decided the roster needed a reset, leading to the blockbuster trades that shipped out defensive cornerstones Sauce Gardner and Quinnen Williams.

That's not to say Gardner and Williams were at fault for the hole the Jets dug themselves, but it was obvious that the current iteration of the team fell into the "same old Jets" mentality.

It's a lasting effect of the Robert Saleh era, where it became the norm to deflect blame on one specific person. Under Saleh and then general manager Joe Douglas, it was easy to point to, for example, Zach Wilson as the reason why the team wasn't winning.

As the losses kept pouring in early on in 2025, it was easy to see that the team was shrinking into a shell, and it's a credit to Glenn that the team was able to come out of the trade deadline and win three of five games to show that they weren't just waving the white flag on another season.

Glenn still has a lot of work to do to prove he should be the head coach in 2027 and beyond, but if Phillips' words ring true, we should hope to see a new version of the Jets in 2026.