The Jets were outscored 100-6 in the final two minutes of first halves since hiring head coach Aaron Glenn heading into Sunday’s game and the team’s issues in those situations continued against the Dolphins.
Glenn, who is now 5-20 as the Jets’ head coach, chose not to use any of his timeouts while the Dolphins had the ball after the two minute warning, which meant that there were only six seconds left after Dolphins quarterback Malik Willis ran for a touchdown that made it 21-7. The Jets would eventually lose 28-25 and Glenn was asked after the game why they opted not to stop the clock at that moment.
“Man, we felt like we were going to stop them,” Glenn said, via a transcript from the team. “And maybe we should have called our timeouts to get it back, but at that point, we just felt like we were going to stop them and be able to get the ball back. That’s something that we should have done is use our timeouts.”
Glenn’s explanation actually makes less sense if the thought was that the Jets were going to stop the Dolphins short of the end zone. Under such circumstances, the Jets would still have been down 14-7 and they’d want to have as much time as possible to remedy that before halftime. They were also getting the ball to start the third quarter and the chance to double dip is one that most coaches find to be a bigger advantage than Glenn thought it was for his team.
It’s not the first time that Glenn’s clock and timeout management has come under scrutiny and one wonders how many more chances he’ll have to try to get it right before the Jets decide to make a change in who makes those decisions.