Aaron Glenn Eliminating Penalties at Training Camp

For the last four years under the Robert Saleh Head Coaching era, the New York Jets have had a top ten defense, with at times a subpar offense. While they were able to score points, the truth is they kept erasing those points, amid needless and stupid mental penalties that erased first downs and or touchdowns.

Regardless of whether they were late and egregious, or soft and slightly shoving down the Quarterback, the Jets have made it very easy on themselves to get flagged for anything and everything the referees want to see. Even when their opponents pretended they got held and got the flag, the Jets need to do a better job of avoiding the yellow flag to get thrown at them.

At the Jets’ training camp in their practice Facility, Head Coach Aaron Glenn had NFL Officials come to practice and informed them to help his players avoid creating dumb penalties so he can erase them from their heads. While we all know you can’t stop every penalty being created, at least cutting the amount of penalties down in a game and an entire season is a must, moving on toward the start of the Regular Season.

“I want the officials here as much as possible. They know that, and it’s no secret that we were the most penalized team in the league last year,” said Glenn. “So that’s one of the things I want to nip in the bud early. Of making sure the discipline is part of what we do, that we fix that now. You can not win games in this league with an undisciplined team. So all the penalties we had last year, we got to knock those things out, and we have to make sure we are good at that.”

“Even the details of what we do, we can’t have any M.A.’s. I know they happen, but we are striving for perfection in that situation of every detail when it comes to offense and defense, and we want to be on top of that. We are trying to make sure we be good on that too, the officials will be here, and we want to knock them out. Undisciplined teams do not win games.”

While we all know every head coach in the NFL wants to eliminate penalties against their teams, have you ever heard a head coach or a brand new head coach trying to take care of this issue at the beginning of training camp? Never. For Aaron Glenn to bring in NFL Officials to training camp early and eradicate these mental errors early, before any of the pre-season games begin, let alone when Week 1 comes in against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

This is refreshing to see from Aaron Glenn, as he aims to eliminate foolish penalties by changing the mindset of his players. While you can’t erase some of them in the game, which would be a miracle, having a disciplined team in every game of the season is the start of a culture change that has been sorely needed for a very long time.

No more catch phrases, no more poor coaching decisions, no more looking over the back of your shoulder to see if a late flag will be flying around and tagging you for an unsportsmanlike conduct call, now is the time to get this situation buttoned up and move forward to have a joyous season, or to finally see some improvement on the field without a mindless and foolish decision by the players to cost the team a score.