Aaron Glenn is the one feeling the heat after the Jets’ 1-3 start, but Darren Mougey is the name that may start creeping into the conversation now that New York has dropped to 1-3 in 2026 and 4-17 overall.
Glenn took the hit after the Week 4 loss to the Chicago Bears, and the record has him sitting squarely on the hot seat. Mougey, meanwhile, has mostly been protected by the goodwill he built with fans through the Sauce Gardner and Garrett Wilson trades, which brought the Jets six first-round picks in two years. That cushion may not last much longer.
The issue is simple: trading well is not the same thing as building a winner. Mougey has been praised for collecting assets, but the Jets still do not look like a functioning football team, and the comparisons to Joe Douglas are getting harder to ignore. Like Douglas, Mougey has managed to avoid most of the blame even as the results have stayed ugly.
Douglas had his own stretch of patience from the fanbase because he could work the trade market and was seen as a GM trying to climb out of the mess left by Mike Maccagnan. He nearly got through six seasons in charge without a single winning year. Mougey is now starting to resemble that same kind of run: plenty of credit for the moves that bring in value, not nearly enough accountability for the product on the field.
The quarterback situation has only complicated things. Mougey has not been able to take a real swing at the position, settling instead for two stopgaps in Justin Fields and Geno Smith. Still, the larger question remains what he has done to show he deserves that kind of swing in the first place.
That’s where the draft record becomes impossible to ignore. The 2026 class has promise in spots, but the top of it did not deliver in Week 4. The Jets’ four top-50 picks were shut out: No. 2 pick David Bailey did not record a sack, Kenyon Sadiq had no catches a week after going for 100 yards, Omar Cooper Jr. was injured, and D’Angelo Ponds, who was only in the lineup because of injuries, had an interception wiped out by a penalty.
The 2025 class has not exactly given Mougey a pile of obvious wins either. Outside of Armand Membou, there are no sure-fire hits, even with Azareye’h Thomas showing some emergence. And the Day 3 group has not produced a player who has clearly changed anything for this roster.
For Jets fans, the problem is not just that the team is losing. It’s that Mougey’s reputation for asset collection is starting to feel a lot like Douglas’ reputation did: useful, but not nearly enough if the roster never turns into something better.
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For a coach trying to establish control, that kind of answer can land poorly with a fan base already wondering who is really driving the offense. Glenns media session did little to ease those concerns, and the broader issue is less about one game than whether the Jets are comfortable leaving so many of the important offensive decisions in a gray area. [Read more 🡒]