Nov 13, 2025; Foxborough, Massachusetts, USA; New York Jets head coach Aaron Glenn watches from the sideline as they take on the New England Patriots at Gillette Stadium. Mandatory Credit: David Butler II-Imagn Images David Butler II-Imagn Images

Jets Focused On Wins, Not No. 1 Draft Pick

Originally posted on New York Jets on SI
By Patrick McAvoy | Last updated Dec 2, 2025 8:30 AM ET

The New York Jets aren’t thinking about draft positioning right now.

It’s extremely unlikely that the Jets will be in the playoffs this season. They aren’t officially out of the mix, but that will come soon unless the Jets win out and a miracle happens. There are just two teams in the AFC who have been eliminated from playoff contention, and they are the Las Vegas Raiders and the Tennessee Titans. What a difference a few weeks make, huh? The Jets were 0-7 but have won three of their last five games and are now 3-9 on the season with five games left to go.

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There's a faction of the fanbase that has been clamoring for more losses at this point to boost the team's draft positioning. If the season ended today, the Jets would have the No. 7 pick in the first round of the 2026 NFL Draft. If your hope is that the Jets are going to try to stack up losses in the coming weeks, you will be disappointed.

The Jets certainly aren't tanking

Jets head coach Aaron Glenn was tasked with coming into a struggling franchise and trying to instill a new culture with the entire franchise as a whole. Early on this season when the losses were piling up, there was negative buzz around the team. But now Glenn's vision is starting to show through, although he acknowledged that there's more work to do.

"Make no mistake about it, we have a long way to go,” Glenn said. “In all three phases, there were some good things, but then again there were some things we really have to get ready to clean up, and that will be our focus this week. And the thing is we’re not hiding from those things that when you look at them on them on tape you’re like, ‘Ah, we got away with one right there.’ So, even though we’re happy about the results of this game, there are a number of things on that tape that we got to get better at. Listen, we’re not going to hide from those things.”

On top of this, Glenn made it clear that the Jets just want to win games, which is important in reference to the draft pick debate.

"Listen, we just want to win games. Period,” Glenn said. “We want to learn how to win games. We want to learn how to win at the end of games. We want to learn how to create a gap within the game. We want to learn how to sustain a high level of play. We want to learn how to continue to finish out games."

There was no better example of this than this past Sunday against the Atlanta Falcons. The Jets duked it out with Atlanta and came out on top thanks to a last-second field goal from Nick Folk. That was a game that easily could've been chalked up as a loss, but the Jets kept fighting until the very end and came out on top. Expect to see more games like that down the stretch.

This article first appeared on New York Jets on SI and was syndicated with permission.

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