One stat shows Aaron Glenn’s tough Jets practices are paying off

Jets fans have heard this song and dance plenty of times before, though. Each year, they are sold the dream of a revitalized culture.

It never truly matters until it translates to results on gameday.

The Glenn-led Jets have yet to play a game that matters. Still, they have played a couple of real football games since the introduction of his intensified practices, giving us our first opportunity to evaluate what an Aaron Glenn team might look like.

In one specific area, Glenn’s revamped practices are already translating to noticeable progress on the field.

The early signs of Glenn’s impact

New York struggled mightily with tackling in 2024, both on defense and special teams. The Jets’ messy tackling embodied the spirit of that team. As talented as they were on paper, their lack of fundamentals and toughness caused the whole to be less than the sum of the parts.

In the 2024 regular season, New York had a missed tackle rate of 17.8% across defense and special teams, per Pro Football Focus, which ranked 28th in the NFL. Like the Jets, each of the other four teams in the bottom five – Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, and Cleveland – had losing records and finished below their over-under win total.

Missed tackles are the mark of a soft and undisciplined team.

Glenn quickly expressed his desire to fix this weakness, not just through his words, but also through his actions. Early in training camp, Glenn had the Jets running physical tackling drills that had not been seen in Florham Park under his predecessors.

Through two preseason games, those drills have yielded the results that Glenn is hoping for.

The Jets cut their missed tackle rate down to 13.9% over their first two preseason games under Glenn, nearly a four-point improvement compared to last year’s regular season. It is the 11th-lowest rate in the preseason thus far, which represents a 17-spot leap.

Sure, it’s only the preseason. But Robert Saleh’s Jets were already foreshadowing their warts at this time one year ago.

In the 2024 preseason, the Jets had a missed tackle rate of 19.4%, which ranked 28th in the league – the identical ranking they ended up with in the regular season.

For that reason, New York’s early improvements in the tackling department cannot be ignored, even if it has only been two preseason games. Glenn instituted changes in practice to address this specific issue, and it is translating to tangible progress on the field.

The next step is to carry that momentum into the regular season.