What Changed with New York Jets Defense To Make Them Better?

There’s no denying the New York Jets defense is playing better, so what’s changed? Less must be more, but the Giants don’t have that luxury.

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After shedding two of their best defensive players, the New York Jets defense is now significantly better. What gives? Plus, the Giants can no longer blame their DC for blowing 4th quarter leads. This is our New York football hour for NFL week 13 and both teams are looking to the future, no matter how grey or gloomy it may be.

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We are faced with the truth that none of us want to accept. The only way through is through, so let’s feel everything and bite the proverbial bullets. Literally everyone is asking, outsiders are laughing or averting their eyes, but someone must step up to the podium and fire back. Tough questions require hard answers.

 

New York Jets and Giants: NFL Week 13

 

 

1. What has changed with the New York Jets defense since trading away its two best players?

Todd Salem: It seems strange that a unit could improve so drastically after getting rid of the supposed two best players. The obvious explanation is that those two players (Sauce Gardner and Quinnen Williams) used to be the team’s two best but have not been since Aaron Glenn took over as head coach. The systems didn’t mesh; the players were not good fits for whatever reason.

That is one logical explanation. Gardner was a shutdown cover corner. If his defense now plays much more zone, it takes away his greatest strength. It would also force him into more run support. With Williams, it is harder to explain how a penetrating tackle would suddenly be less useful. It could have been how Glenn and DC Steve Wilks were having the lineman line up, as well as how often they were blitzing and how many doubles he was facing.

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So that’s part of the story, but it can’t be the whole story.

For three straight weeks now, the Jets D has been pretty solid. They roughed up the incompetent Browns offense. They followed that up by swarming and bothering MVP-hopeful Drake Maye and New England. And this past week, they completely bottled up the Lamar Jackson-led Ravens offense.

Much of this is thanks to improved knowledge under Glenn. It takes time for players to know exactly where they should be and what they should be doing in every scenario under a new regime. Cutting down on mistakes, physical and mental, is also helpful. It feels like a unit-wide buy-in. There is no single player to point to as wreaking all the havoc. One week it was Will McDonald; then Jermaine Johnson; the Ravens game felt like a swarming, team effort to hold Baltimore to 2.9 yards per carry on the ground.

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The Jets have less talent now but seem to be playing better and finding more success. It’s one of those under-the-radar features of the NFL: sometimes it has more to do with how a coach meshes with a team rather than how “good” the coach is and how talented the players are.

Dan Salem: The Jets defense DOES seem to be playing better overall, even if the results are much the same. Locker room noise is probably as important to a unit’s success as actual scheme and ability, because even one player talking smack and looking down upon themselves, the coaches, and the team can completely implode the entire unit’s success. Removing that one black spot, no matter how talented, can immediately result in improvement and greater overall success.

This has been a rocky first season for Glenn, but the defensive improvements are extremely encouraging. Less is more for the Jets and because the offense really only lacks two players, an improving defense bodes extremely well for next year. With the draft capital at their disposal, New York can add a difference maker at quarterback, another solid wide receiver, and the defensive pieces necessary to truly be dominant.

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Hope is in short supply for the Jets, but with every passing week that we see the team improve, there is reason to hope. Wins are simply nice to have and New York should get several more this season. I like what I’m seeing now, even if the season is ‘lost’ and there’s technically ‘nothing left to play for.’

 

 

 

2. How much failure can the New York Giants blame on fired defensive coordinator Shane Bowen?

Todd Salem: Interim head coach Mike Kafka was apparently following in Brian Daboll’s footsteps more succinctly than us outsiders even knew. With the Giants up double digits in the fourth quarter, the Kafka-led Giants decided to keep the streak alive and blow yet another huge lead late on the road.

The difference this time, however, was afterward, Kafka fired defensive coordinator Shane Bowen. Is Bowen the sole source of New York’s late-game failures in 2025? No, but his influence was surely more than anyone else’s.

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This move was a long-time coming. Bowen seemed unfit to lead a defense. His schemes were unimaginative and did not put his players in the best positions to succeed. And whenever the Giants led late (which was surprisingly often this season), Bowen got scared and huddled back into prevents and bubbles. Despite the team’s weakness being run defense, opposing passing games carved up New York when things got important. (And as Jahmyr Gibbs showed, opposing run games ALSO carved up NY.)

Now, not everything was Bowen’s fault, as I said. The defensive secondary has ranged from banged up to decimated by injury. The ideology of the defense late also has something to do with strategy set forth by the head coach. But now that we saw this happen with two “different” regimes, it all comes back to Bowen.

The obvious question is what comes next. An interim coordinator has even less impact on a franchise than an interim head coach. What I’d be looking for these next few weeks from Kafka and interim DC Charlie Bullen is a change in mindset: keep attacking offenses, lean on the pass rush strength, and don’t be afraid to put players in challenging positions. 

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If we see corners Cor’dale Flott, Dru Phillips, and Deonte Banks fail over and over in the second half of the year, maybe that tells us something about them rather than about the coaching staff. If Bobby Okereke can’t make plays in space, maybe it’s time to move on rather than look for a safer defensive approach. This is the time to experiment; staying conservative will not help the players and will certainly not help the interim coaches prove anything to management.

Dan Salem: The Giants defense may not be built to play ‘prevent’ with much success, but after yet another huge lead thrown into the trash heap of losses, we certainly must start staring the players themselves in the face. How are they going from three quarters of dominance to one quarter of ineptitude? Why are they themselves taking their foot off the gas?

One could argue that opposing teams are overlooking the Giants and don’t get going until quarter four, but that can’t possibly be true THIS MANY times. Jaxson Dart is too good for other teams to not bring it. Even Jameis Winston is too good for teams to assume they have an easy win at their disposal. Furthermore, the Giants suck too badly for their own players to think they can stop coming as hard as possible for the entire game.

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This is not a good football team, yet if games ended after three quarters the Giants would be 7-5 and deemed a quality team en route to the postseason. Simply put, this team cannot finish and no amount of coaching is going to fix the issue. Here’s hoping next year brings good tidings.

 

 

Meet our Sports Writers:

Dan Salem is Lead Editor and Co-owner of BuzzChomp. He’s an award winning Actor, Director and Producer. Visit M Square Productions for his film work, or get lost in his old-school comedy on Pillow Talk TV. You can follow him on X, TikTok and Instagram. His latest film ‘Alone’ is now on Amazon.

Todd Salem is a Staff Writer and Contributing Editor at BuzzChomp. He’s also a champion of fantasy football and fantasy baseball, dominating leagues for over two decades. Comment below on his unfiltered opinions.

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