With the Jets hiring Aaron Glenn, many fans in town have criticized the move of being all-too familiar to the team’s typical operating procedure, which has often included hiring coaches with defensive backgrounds and no head coaching experience.
Aaron Glenn fits that mold in terms of his resume, but Keith McPherson says that shouldn’t matter given all of the other intangibles that he can bring to the locker room.
“So much of the conversation is ‘Same old Jets.’ Wrong,” Keith said. “So much of the conversation this week is ‘What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’ Stop yourself.
“This is not the same.”
For Keith, the Glenn hiring feels more like what the Mets brought to Queens last year in their first-year manager, who turned out to be the perfect fit.
“This is similar to Carlos Mendoza, right? You had no idea what Carlos Mendoza was gonna be like, what he was gonna do,” Keith said. “It's easier to believe that the Jets are gonna be miserable, that they made a mistake again. But when I look at what Carlos Mendoza was able to do his first year on the job, of course there was a learning curve.
“Look at everything he had to deal with. A terrible start. He had to talk to the media every night and stay positive, stay even keeled. That's what I loved about Carlos Mendoza. This guy's not showing you anything. He's not showing you that they're struggling.”
Much like Mendoza, Keith believes Glenn will be able to get the team to buy into his philosophy, and the Jets will be better for it.
“Clearly, [Mendoza] has the respect of the locker room, and I think Aaron Glenn will have that as well,” Keith said. “And I made a parallel with Pete Carroll too. I'm like, ‘Oh, everybody wants Pete Carroll, the old man that has done it before, has coached before, tried and true.’ That's Buck Showalter. They could have stayed with Buck Showalter. They could have played it safe.
“They weren't afraid to go in a different direction, bring some new blood, some new energy in.”