Jets head coach Aaron Glenn’s relationship with the media has gone froma little tense to downright petty for seemingly no good reason. Glenn continued his unprompted tirade against the media on Tuesday.
Following a report from ESPN’s Rich Cimini that wide receiver Garrett Wilson would miss three to four weeks with a knee sprain, Glenn refused to answer any injury questions at his next press conference.
Instead, he fired back at reporters, sarcastically saying, “Rich has all the answers. You can get it from him,” in reference to Cimini, who broke the story. It’s a bizarre look for a coach whose team has finally started to string wins together as of late.
This wasn’t an isolated incident, either. Glenn has been combative with reporters for weeks, notably over questions about the Jets’ quarterback situation. He continues to decline naming a starter, citing “competitive advantage,” and now says he won’t even respond to future QB questions.
Reporters are simply trying to do their jobs, yet Glenn seems intent on picking fights that don’t need to exist. Even Garrett Wilson brushed off his own status by saying,
The irony is that the Jets are winning again. They’ve taken back-to-back games, silencing some of the criticism that surrounded this new regime to start the year. But Glenn’s hostility toward the media continues to be an unforced error. He’s not doing himself any favors.
The Jets are a team trying to prove they’re turning a corner, but their head coach seems determined to create battles where there shouldn’t be any. It’s a bizarre approach from a first-year head coach who has, in many ways, done a lot right.
Glenn has worked hard to instill toughness, accountability, and resilience in this team — all of which are beginning to show up on Sundays. But his handling of the media feels needlessly antagonistic, especially at a time when the Jets are trying to build goodwill after years of dysfunction.
It’s one thing to decline naming a starting quarterback. You could make a case that, while unconventional, there is a competitive advantage to forcing teams to prepare for both Justin Fields and Tyrod Taylor.
But Glenn lashing out at a reporter for simply doing his job — reporting on an injury — comes off as petty and insecure. It’s a strange approach for any NFL head coach, and one could argue it reflects poorly on his leadership.
Obviously, what matters most is what happens on Sundays. If the Jets keep winning, none of this off-field noise will really matter in the short term. But it’s still unnecessary chaos — the kind created entirely by Glenn himself.
By picking fights with reporters, he’s not just making their jobs harder, but he’s also making his own job harder, too. It forces players like Wilson to field questions they shouldn’t have to and adds tension where there doesn’t need to be any. It ultimately serves no purpose, especially for a team finally showing progress on the field.
Winning has muted the outside noise for now. But if the Jets start losing again, Glenn’s dismissive attitude toward transparency will wear thin fast. For whatever reason, Glenn’s weekly press-conference battles remain the strangest subplot of the Jets season.
Aliaksei Protas is on a royal heater to start the 2025-26 season.
Protas leads the Capitals in goals after scoring 4 times in the team’s first 5 games of the year. All 4 tallies have come at five-on-five, which puts him in a three-way tie for second place in the entire NHL. His hot start sees him on pace to score 66 goals this season and record 98 points in a full 82-game season.
“Sometimes you get lucky, and I think that’s what’s happening with me right now,” Protas explained after the Capitals’ 5-1 win over the Minnesota Wild on Friday. “Sometimes a couple of good bounces and great work from the whole five on the ice, from the whole team just being on the same page.”
Is Protas right? Well, let’s look at his goals.
Protas’s first goal of the season came after Jakob Chychrun chopped at the puck near the blue line, and it rolled right to him between the circles.
His second of the night came after he sped by everyone on the ice and scored on a breakaway.
Against the Lightning, he shot the puck past Andrei Vasilevskiy after Connor McMichael had the goaltender looking the wrong way. “Oh god, my mom would score from that,” Protas said afterward.
Protas scored his fourth goal with a pass. His attempted cross-crease feed to McMichael instead went off a Wild defenseman, through netminder Filip Gustavsson, and into the net.
“Yeah, I tried to pass,” Protas said. “I mean, every goal is like it, this one, too.”
But what if there’s something more going on here than just puck luck?
The 24-year-old Protas is entering his prime as a scoring forward and appears to have returned to the Capitals a step quicker after another hard offseason of training in Belarus with his brother, Ilya.
Protas recorded a career-high 66 points (30g, 36a) in 76 games last season as Spencer Carbery made him a staple in the Capitals’ top six. His previous career high in tallies was 6, meaning he had a 400 percent increase in goals.*
Nothing in Protas’s underlying stats says he is undeserving. With him on the ice at five-on-five, the Capitals are seeing positive differentials in shot attempts (+19), scoring chances (+14), and high-danger chances (+8). The Capitals have outscored their opponents 6 to 1 with Protas on the ice at five-on-five, despite him being a part of the Caps’ shutdown line.
Protas’s shooting percentage is currently 25 percent (4 of 16), a tad high. Though if you compare it to his shooting percentage over 76 games during the 2024-25 season, he’s about in line with that mark: 21.1 percent.
All of this is to say, Aliaksei Protas is one of the best players in the NHL currently and is beginning to make the case that he’s an elite finisher. Nothing he does this season should surprise you, even if it may surprise him.
“[He’s] made in a laboratory,” Ryan Leonard said earlier in the month. “It’s crazy. We all say he’s the best player in the league, so it’s special. He’s a special player.”
“I’m telling you, he’s just scratching the surface on his career in this league,” head coach Spencer Carbery said. “He’s such a horse, he’s such a big guy that skates so well, that’s now going to play on the power play this year. He’s got a bright, bright future.”