Every Jets coaching search begins the same way. Find the next hot coordinator before anyone else. Find the next Ben Johnson, the next Liam Coen. Looks smart. It is not.
The Jets are 2-5, Aaron Glenn is 5-19, and the team has three first-round picks and more than $100 million in cap space coming into 2027. This is the most important hire the franchise has made in a decade, and the worst thing they can do is treat it like a lottery ticket.
Here’s the problem with chasing the next star coordinator: you’ll only find out who he is after it works. Coen had one year as an offensive coordinator in Tampa when Jacksonville hired him. Johnson spent a cycle of turning down jobs before he landed in Chicago. Both look like geniuses now. Jacksonville went 13-4 last year and Chicago took the No. 2 NFC seed.
But in that time, many teams have passed on both, and many other “next big things” are nowhere to be found. If you can’t clearly see who that man is by now, take a guess. Predicting your head coach in the same offseason you draft your franchise quarterback is the definition of foolish risk.
So stop guessing, and narrow the job down to something that really matters: quarterback development. Not culture. Not a defensive identity. Not a big name that won ten games around anyone under center.
The 2027 quarterback is the franchise for the next decade, and the head coach’s job description must begin and end with him. The rest of the roster, the line, the secondary, the depth, Darren Mougey has already shown he can fix with picks and cap space.
The good news is that QB development is the one thing you can really check. Shane Steichen calls the plays for Justin Herbert’s Rookie of the Year season, for Jalen Hurts’ 2022 jump as MVP runner-up, and for Daniel Jones’ resurgence in Indianapolis, where Jones is an MVP candidate at 8-2. Dan Pitcher was in the room with Joe Burrow every day of Burrow’s career.
And in college, there was no better eye and hand for quarterbacks than Oklahoma State’s Eric Morris. He was Mahomes’ offensive coordinator at Texas Tech, and he found Cam Ward as a zero-star recruit at Incarnate Word and coached him through two schools to becoming the No. 1 overall pick. Now he’s done it again with Drew Mestemaker, a kid who never took a varsity snap at quarterback in high school and is now the top QB on many 2027 boards after developing at lightning speed.
Those aren’t projections, those are track records. You can argue about clock management or a head coaching record, and you should hire those weaknesses, but you don’t predict what these guys do best.
And here’s what hot-coordinators miss: get the quarterback right and the next Ben Johnson will come your way. Coaches chase quarterbacks. The Chargers had Justin Herbert, and when their job opened up, Jim Harbaugh took it.
A Jets team with a young franchise quarterback on a rookie deal, a stacked draft haul and a GM who knows how to build assets is shaping up to be one of the best jobs in football the next time it opens. That’s how you get a star coach: you build something that star coaches want to coach.
The Jets tried it a different way. They went after the hot name, the cultured guy and the defensive mind, and they started over with a new quarterback.
This time, flip the order. Hire a coach to develop quarterbacks, draft a quarterback, and let everyone else follow suit. Get it right, and the Jets won’t be looking for the next Ben Johnson. He will call them.