While Buffalo Bills fans try their best to overlook the dreaded anticipation of watching the rival New England Patriots in Super Bowl LX this weekend, the New York Jets’ long-winded misery can always help soften the blow.
The Jets were abysmal in 2025 under first-year head coach Aaron Glenn, winning just four games and securing the No. 2 overall pick in the draft. Their future outlook doesn’t look much better without a worthy quarterback to select with that pick in April’s Draft.
But former Bills defensive lineman Harrison Phillips, who just finished up his first season with the Jets, recently expressed why he has faith the Jets can turn the corner under Glenn, and why no one should be surprised his first season presented such difficulties.
Ex-Bills DT Harrison Phillips details the culture issues that plagued the Jets
"I think A.G. inherited a very cancerous, truculent group, whole, top to bottom," Phillips said.
Considering the Jets parted ways with two of their biggest defensive stars in Sauce Gardner and Quinnen Williams, clearly, the Jets felt the same way. Both of those players are among the most talented at their respective positions, but neither necessarily helped the Jets get back on track.
Now they are elsewhere, and the Jets have a ton of draft picks to rebuild behind them. Still, Phillips take on his team’s poor culture was only hammered home when Gardner admitted to being late in his first meeting with the Indianapolis Colts, which is how he learned things were different there in Indy.
“I was there for one season; it was a very difficult season,” Phillips said. “And I almost wanted to waver on some of my thoughts, and my beliefs, and my optimism. And so I can imagine having to be there year after year, after year, after year, and not seeing the results that you wanted, and it tainted people.“
Poor culture breeds poor culture, after all. The Jets haven’t reached the playoffs since 2010, when they were in the AFC Championship for the second consecutive season with Mark Sanchez at quarterback. They’ve only had one winning season since then, with four different head coaches after Rex Ryan and even more starting quarterbacks.
It must be a culture shock for a player such as Phillips, who has been with successful teams in every other season of his eight-year NFL career. He went to the postseason twice with the Bills and the Minnesota Vikings.
“Then young players come in and see, ‘Oh, that’s my vet, and that’s how they’re acting, so I’m going to act like that too.' And so it’s a long chain of things, and it can’t be fixed like that,” Phillips said.
DT Harrison Phillips on why Jets Fans Should Believe in Aaron Glenn’s Vision#JetUp pic.twitter.com/b67KijGsCg
— 𝙅𝙀𝙏𝙎 𝙈𝙀𝘿𝙄𝘼🛫 (@NYJets_Media) February 5, 2026
Phillips went on to say that Glenn should be able to begin to see progress in 2026 and beyond, having more time and resources to implement a new culture. Still, he started from ground zero and fell into a deep hole afterward. He has a long way to dig himself out, especially as a former NFL cornerback with 41 career interceptions who just watched his own defense go 17 games without a single interception, making the Jets the first team since the merger to finish a regular season with fewer than two interceptions.
The more things change in the AFC East, though, the more they seem to stay the same. With the Patriots in the Super Bowl, the Bills still sitting on the cusp of their first appearance in three decades, the Dolphins going through more turnover, and the Jets climbing their way out of the bottom of the NFL basement, Bills Mafia may as well assume they fell back in time to the 2018-19 seasons.
Glenn wouldn’t be the first coach since then to make headway from Year 1 to Year 2 with the Jets, only to see all of his efforts wasted away by the franchise’s longstanding ineptitude.