The Jets were the only team in the NFL without a takeaway heading into Week 5 and they are the only team without one heading into Week 6.
That run has earned them a place in league history. PFT noted last week that turnovers began being tracked as a statistic in 1933 and no team had ever gone without a takeaway through the first five games of a season. The Jets now stand alone on that front.
“That’s true. Well, I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I just know this, that we haven’t taken the ball away,” head coach Aaron Glenn said, via a transcript from the team. “That’s one of the things you guys are going to hear me say, it’s not giveaways, it’s not turnovers, you have to take the ball away. That’s what you do as a defense. That has to be the mentality of the defense, that we have to go and get it, because no one is going to give it to us and we have to be intentional about that too. We emphasize it, we attack it, we go through it, but, man, it just has to show up. We got to keep doing it. We can’t just sit back and say, ‘We’re not getting them.’ We have to continue to try and emphasize it, and hopefully at some point they’re going to come in bunches for us.”
Glenn was the Lions’ defensive coordinator before being hired by the Jets and his background on that side of the ball makes the Jets’ lack of defensive success all the more galling at this point of the season. Glenn said he isn’t planning to take over defensive play-calling from coordinator Steve Wilks, but some changes will have to be made for the Jets to give themselves a better chance at earning their first win of the season.
