Tanner Engstrand - The OC Candidate Nobody is talking about.

Edition #778

☀️ Good morning ☕

Are the Jets interviewing too many people? The list keeps growing and while most of these interviews are capped at 3 hour zoom calls, the Jets are doing their due diligence.

According to the official release from the website, the 33rd Team were hired in a “support role to help identify and vet candidates in addition to coordinate interviews.” If this is what the final vetting looks like, I’d love to see the pool of candidates they started with, it must have give War & Peace a run for its money.

Saying that, I’m in favour of meeting multiple candidates instead of locking onto one. Sometimes you think you know what you’re looking for and then something special comes along, I hope that something special is a GM/HC tandem that leads to success.

• For all those keeping count, the Jets have so far completed four GM interviews and three Head Coach interviews. Thomas Dimitroff, Jon Robinson, Jim Nagy and Louis Riddick for the GM role and Ron Rivera, Mike Vrabel and Rex Ryan for HC.

• The Jets completed two GM interviews in person yesterday with both interviews being held in Palm Beach, I imagine at Woody’s $32 million mansion. Alec Halaby (PHI) and Mike Borgonzi (KC) were the two GM’s to interview and both are very strong candidates for the role. Matt Nagy also interviewed, but that was via zoom.

• Minnesota Vikings senior VP of player personnel Ryan Grigson is scheduled to interview for the Jets GM job over the weekend.

• Chris Spielman will interview for the Jets GM job. This is an interesting one, as his brother Rick Spielman is helping the Jet in their search so this does smell a little of nepotism…but, Spielman is an intriguing option for the Jets. He’s been working as a Special assistant to the owner and CEO of the Detroit Lions since 2020 and is credited with defining the culture there and being part of the decision to hire Dan Campbell and Brad Holmes. He’s never been a GM, that role with Detroit is his only executive experience in the NFL, but he had a storied playing career at Ohio State and was a 2nd round pick of the Detroit Lions in 1988. He was an All-Pro and Pro Bowler and was named to the Detroit Lions All-Time Team, so he knows what success looks like.

• The Jets requested an interview with Steve Spagnuolo who’s currently serving as the Chiefs defensive coordinator. He has head coaching experience with both the Rams and the Giants, and while he never had the best team to work with his record of 11-41 is pretty diabolical. In the 6 years he’s been with Kansas City as their DC he’s overseen a top 10 scoring defense on 5 occasions. Could he be better as a HC this time around? Potentially, but maybe he’s just a really good defensive coordinator.

• I don’t believe the Jets have extended an interview request to Matt Campbell, but the Iowa State man is going to be taking an interview with the Chicago Bears. Considering some of the guys we’re talking to, I think it would be mind-numbingly dumb to not speak to Campbell.

• On a similar note, the Raiders have requested an interview with Todd Monken, and the Jets have yet to do the same. There is some talk that there is some bad blood left over from the 2019 process where Monken was almost named the new Head Coach before the Jets went with Adam Gase.

At the start of this process my dream was to have Ben Johnson running this franchise into the future. It’s become abundantly clear that’s not going to happen.

The Jets have not requested an interview with Johnson, likely because they know he’s turn it down. That’s the only reason you don’t speak to someone like Johnson.

With that news my preference has shifted to Aaron Glenn, who we spoke about yesterday. If you want someone who has experience in the league, has respect across the board and has been part of a culture change, then he’s your man.

I don’t subscribe to the notion that the new Head Coach has to be an offensive minded coach. I believe the Head Coach should first and foremost be a leader who is comfortable delegating coordinator duties to ensure his focus is on the entire roster.

Glenn ticks all the boxes for me, as does Brian Flores. In my mind I’ve become extremely comfortable with two pairings. Brian Flores as HC and Josh McCown as the offensive coordinator (more on that tomorrow), and Aaron Glenn as the HC with Tanner Engstrand as the OC.

Yesterday we focused on Aaron Glenn, and if you missed that you can read it here.

Head Coaching Candidate: Aaron Glenn

Glenn has been in the league since 1994, first as a player and then as a coach from 2014. Along the way I’m sure he’s worked with plenty of people, built plenty of relationships and thought long and hard about the kind of staff he’d piece together if he were hired as a Head Coach one day.

Here’s the obviously disclaimer. I have absolutely no idea if Aaron Glenn has a positive or negative relationship with Tanner Engstrand. I have no idea if he rates him as an offensive mind of coach. I have no idea if he would even consider him as his offensive coordinator. I will also preface this by stating that if this were the partnership I would love for Glenn to hire a very experienced defensive coordinator who could act as assistant head coach, someone in the mould of Ron Rivera would make sense.

So who is Tanner Engstrand?