Aaron Glenn is not crying about the NFL’s national TV partners ignoring his New York Jets. He thinks the Jets earned it.
The 2026 NFL schedule was released earlier this offseason and the Jets joined four other teams completely shut out of primetime. Arizona, Miami, Las Vegas, and Tennessee are the others. That is a brutal list to be on.
For the Jets, this is not exactly new. Last season under Glenn they played only one primetime game, a Week 11 spot against the Patriots. They went 3-14 overall, finishing tied for the worst record in the league. NBC and ESPN saw enough.
Glenn was asked about it Sunday and refused to spin it as motivation or disrespect.
“To me, it’s more of you earn the right,” Glenn said, per ESPN’s Rich Cimini. “And, yes, you can use that as motivation, but you earn the right. That’s the good thing about this league. You earn your right. Players, coaches, everybody. You earn your right to get what you get in this league.”
That is the right tone from a head coach who watched his team lose 14 games in his first year. There is no point pretending the Jets deserve to be on every Monday night.
The bigger picture is rough. Just two seasons ago in 2024, the Jets were tied with the Cowboys and 49ers for the most primetime games in the league with six. They went 2-6 in those games and the season ended with Robert Saleh getting fired, Aaron Rodgers limping through games, and the franchise melting down in front of a national audience.
The networks burned themselves on the Jets for a decade and finally said enough. That is what Glenn is admitting without saying it directly.
The 2026 quarterback room is Cade Klubnik and the returning Geno Smith. That is a fine room. It is not a primetime room. Klubnik is a rookie who has to prove he belongs. Smith is 35 and was already replaced once.
The Jets are unlikely to follow the Knicks playbook this fall and turn New York into a basketball-style love affair. Football fans in this city have been kicked too many times to believe in green again until they see it on the field.
Glenn gets it. He took the job knowing the rebuild would be brutal and the spotlight would dim before it returned. If the Jets win games, primetime comes back. If they do not, this version of the schedule is what they get.
For now, the only national TV the Jets get is when a Patrick Mahomes highlight cuts to a Jets stat. That is on them to change.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
