Aaron Glenn is not going to whine about the NFL schedule. The man knows exactly why the Jets got buried.
New York is one of five teams completely shut out of primetime for the 2026 season. They join the Arizona Cardinals, Miami Dolphins, Las Vegas Raiders, and Tennessee Titans on a list nobody wants to be on. The Jets played exactly one primetime game in 2025, a Week 11 loss to the eventual AFC champion New England Patriots.
Glenn, a 15-year NFL veteran who has played in plenty of primetime games himself, took the news with the kind of perspective you only get from a guy who has been on both sides of it.
“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 correct answer. The Jets have not earned anything in years. Their 2024 season ended at 5-12. Their 2025 season under Glenn ended at 3-14, tied for the worst record in the entire league with three other teams. The networks looked at their schedule, saw what they had to choose from, and quickly moved on to anything else.
NBC, ESPN, Amazon, and Netflix are not running a charity. Sunday Night Football, Monday Night Football, and Thursday Night Football need ratings. Bad teams with no household names do not move the needle. The Jets currently check both boxes.
The depth chart is the real problem. Cade Klubnik enters his second NFL season as the projected starter after going in the second round of the 2025 draft. Geno Smith is back as the veteran insurance after a year in Las Vegas. That is not a quarterback room that screams primetime. That is a quarterback room that screams 1 PM regional broadcast.
The Jets’ best players are mostly defensive. Sauce Gardner is still one of the best corners in football. Quinnen Williams remains a top-tier interior pass rusher. But defensive players do not sell primetime games. Quarterbacks do, and the Jets do not have one of those.
Compare that to two years ago, when New York shared the league lead with six primetime games alongside the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers. The Aaron Rodgers experiment was supposed to be appointment viewing. Instead, the Jets went 2-6 in those games and finished the year at 5-12. The networks remember that. The networks always remember that.
Glenn’s job now is to turn the Jets back into a team that someone outside the New York metro area actually wants to watch. That starts with Klubnik developing into a legitimate NFL starter. It continues with Glenn proving he can win games with this roster, which he flatly did not do last year.
If New York wins eight or nine games this season, the primetime games will come back in 2027. If they lose double digits again, the schedule-makers will keep treating them like Buffalo’s Week 1 warmup act.
The good news is that Glenn is not selling the locker room a sob story about disrespect. The schedule reflects the standings. The standings reflect the work. He gets it. Now the team has to prove he can fix it.
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.
