CHICAGO — Aaron Glenn knows exactly what’s coming.
We’re not talking about the Browns next Sunday at MetLife Stadium.
We’re talking about a force much deeper, more powerful and difficult to deal with than simply another NFL team or the next game.
History — losing history created by the Jets all on their own — is repeating itself.
Right before our eyes.
Again.
It was there, all over Soldier Field on Sunday in the form of the sloppy 23-12 loss to the Bears that was not nearly as close as the final score would suggest.
More importantly, it’s there in the NFL standings, where the Jets are 1-3 and spiraling, Sunday being their third consecutive loss after a season-opening win over the lowly (and winless) Titans.
Of course, one year has little to nothing to do with the next, and this year’s roster is different than last year’s and so on. But when losing becomes a franchise’s common denominator, it becomes a stench that stays with it like body odor until it’s washed out or deodorized.
The Jets can talk about how they’ve been competitive in every game and make the point that has to be considered progress after going 3-14 a year ago.
They can argue that they should be 2-2 at worst and maybe even 3-1 right now.
Yet, at the quarter pole of the 2026 season, they are 1-3 and again going in the wrong direction in the standings.
Glenn, in his second season as the Jets head coach, is bracing for the storm of negative energy he believes is about to descend upon his team. Because he knows Jets fans are going to associate this team with all the rest of the losing teams of the past 15 years without a playoff berth.
“There are too many people who want to think about history,’’ Glenn said after the loss, in which his team was so thoroughly outplayed that the Bears ran 89 plays to 32 for the Jets, amassed 34 first downs to seven for the Jets, 492 offensive yards to 157, ran the ball 54 times for 232 yards and had the ball for 42:45 to just 17:15 for the Jets.
“Inside that locker room, I want my guys not to think about history, because it’s going to be brought up so much from the outside, people beating us down with history,” Glenn added. “We just have to circle the wagons and not let any of that come inside our locker room.”
He’s going to have to order some hurricane shutters from South Florida to keep the noise out.
The Bears had more first downs than the Jets ran offensive plays, the first time that’s happened in the NFL in 10 years. And that’s embarrassing, plain and simple.
The Jets were penalized 12 times for 76 yards in the game, and three of those penalties negated interceptions. This is a big deal considering the Jets entered the game having not had a pick since the season finale in 2024, having gone 20 games without one.
Note: They did mercifully end that streak of futility when safety Minkah Fitzpatrick picked off Bears quarterback Tyson Bagent in the second quarter.
Speaking of Bagent — an undrafted free agent out of Division II Shepherd University in Martinsburg, West Virginia — he grossly outplayed Jets quarterback Geno Smith, who had been in the midst of a rebirth in the first three games of the season.
Bagent, who hadn’t started an NFL game since his rookie year in 2023, was 25-for-34 passing for 268 yards in place of starter Caleb Williams (out with a hamstring injury).
Smith, who entered the game with a sparkling 75.5 completion percentage, was just 8-for-15 for 119 yards, 58 of which came on a garbage-time touchdown pass to Isaiah Williams with the Jets already trailing 23-6 in the fourth quarter.
For the second consecutive week, the game pitted Glenn against one of his former Detroit coaching colleagues.
Last week, he went up against his former boss, Lions head coach Dan Campbell, and lost 31-24.
Sunday, it was Bears head coach Ben Johnson, who was Lions offensive coordinator while Glenn was defensive coordinator.
Both Glenn and Johnson took over losing programs as first-time head coaches before last season. Johnson, who led Chicago to the playoffs in 2025, is 14-7 with the Bears. Glenn is 4-17 and counting.
“I’m very, very disappointed, on a number of different levels,” Glenn said, citing the penalties that negated turnovers, the sputtering offense that converted just two field goals off the two turnovers the defense forced, and the defense’s inability to get off the field. “We all have to muster up something inside to get this turned in the right direction when we have a game like this.”
Whether the Jets want to admit it, the negative history Glenn is bent on changing is hovering like a dark cloud over this team, same as it did the rest of those teams that failed to make the playoffs.
It’s getting late early yet again for the Jets.
