The 2005 Dallas Cowboys were an incubator for future NFL head coaches, with six assistants from Bill Parcells’ staff and two players from his roster ascending to the highest level of the football coaching profession.
The future coaches included an intense, long-in-the-tooth cornerback who played bigger than his 5-foot-9 frame and a hulking tight end who was biting kneecaps long before he spoke it into the NFL lexicon.
“He was the guy that Bill Parcells used to use to piss somebody off, and there were a number of fights in practice because of him,” Aaron Glenn, the corner, said of Dan Campbell, the tight end.
Campbell and Glenn formed a strong bond that season together. They went from teammates in Dallas to assistant coaches with the New Orleans Saints to head coach-defensive coordinator with the Detroit Lions, enduring tough times and moments of sheer joy.
Their relationship was built on a promise by Campbell, who vowed to Glenn that he’d be his defensive coordinator if he ever became a head coach. Campbell did so in 2021 when he took over in Detroit, where the two developed an even closer bond, and doubled down in their first year together, standing by his guy in the 2022 season when it would have been easy to fire him after a rough start.
“One of the greatest days of my life was him getting the [New York Jets] job, and one of the worst days of my life was him getting that job because you know you’re losing a little piece of you,” Campbell said Friday. “That’s what he meant to me and to us. So, that’s hard.”
On Sunday, they will face each other for the first time as head coaches (both sitting at 1-1), with Glenn bringing the Jets to Ford Field -- his home from 2021 to 2024. And nearly 500 miles away, at his house in Saratoga Springs, New York, the legendary Parcells will watch with pride.
“I always told them all that [coaching] is not for well-adjusted people, so I don’t know why they would pick that profession,” Parcells said with a hint of sarcasm, alluding to Campbell, Glenn and his many protégés. “But they’re football guys. They love it. That’s their game.”
No change for the better
Campbell knew changes needed to be made in 2022 when the Lions were off to a 1-6 start.
Coming off a 32-27 loss to the Miami Dolphins, Detroit scored on all five of its first-half possessions and entered halftime with a comfortable 10-point lead. But Glenn’s defense squandered it, leading to a fifth consecutive loss.
To that point, Glenn’s unit was allowing a league-high 32.1 points per game, causing him to face heavy criticism, including calls for the first-time defensive coordinator to be fired.
But Campbell maintained faith in Glenn. And the defense gradually improved, which was instrumental in Detroit winning eight of its final 10 games where it allowed just 20.2 points per game throughout that stretch and narrowly missed the playoffs.
“[It] helps when you have somebody that you have a tremendous amount of trust for,” Campbell said Friday. “You’ve been through a lot with them as a player and as a coach, you know what they’re made of, and he’s really -- he looks different than me. I’m taller, I’m whatever. He’s quicker. All these different things, man, but we’re really the same. I mean we’re so much the same. And he’s the defensive version, I’m the offensive version. And so, he was my right-hand man.”
Detroit would make some major changes, including firing defensive backs coach Aubrey Pleasant, but Glenn remained. Campbell credits Glenn for being a huge part of rebuilding the Lions’ organization to what it is today after spending hours together planning and strategizing on ways they could improve. Glenn helped set the foundation for the Lions’ current streak of four consecutive winning seasons (a first in over 50 years), including a franchise-best 15 wins in 2024.
“Our players know exactly what’s coming in here [on Sunday] because the defensive coordinator was here for five years,” Campbell said. “... This is going to be a knockout, 60-minute brawl.”
This looks familiar
It’s déjà vu in Detroit two weeks into the 2026 season. After a 1-1 start during which Detroit’s defense allowed 71 points and gave up 915 total yards, Campbell recalled those tough early moments with Glenn.
This time, Campbell is hearing some of those same concerns aimed at current defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard, whom Campbell continues to vouch for -- just like he did for Glenn in 2022.
“I never second-guessed [Glenn]. And even during that period when we were going through it, we came into that year ’22 with ‘All right, this is what’ll be best for our front. We’re going to become more attack style and shoot gaps.’ And even though that’s something we didn’t believe in necessarily ... we felt it was the right thing with what we had at the time and it proved to not be,” Campbell recalled. “And all right, man, we get through basically the bye week, we start to shift and get back to what we do a little bit of.
“I think that’s important, to be able to identify, ‘All right, let’s make this correction. Let’s try this. Let’s tighten this up. Let’s go back to this.’ That’s a sign of a good coach. And [Sheppard has] got that too, but that’s why AG just, he checked all those boxes, and you’ve got to look through all the other stuff and really look at the substance behind it.”
Former No. 2 pick Aidan Hutchinson was a rookie on the 2022 team in Detroit that got off to a slow start. He still remembers how the defense was able to turn things around.
“AG is such a leader of men for sure,” Hutchinson said Wednesday, “and I think we all always trusted him to figure that out and I think the same as with Shepp ... he’s cut from the same cloth.
“Different coaching styles a little bit, but I think, yeah, that’s the intention right now is all hands on deck.”
‘That friendship will always last’
As assistants on Sean Payton’s staff with the New Orleans Saints from 2016 to 2020, Campbell and Glenn spent hours talking defense. Looking back, Glenn suspects that maybe those long talks were informal job interviews.
Glenn said it was an honor to serve as defensive coordinator, adding, “I was the first guy he hired and it took -- I don’t know -- maybe a week before we hired anybody else, and we just sat in my office, and we talked football, and how we were going to change this program around. Those things will always stick with me because the things that we talked about, we actually did, and Detroit actually ended up being exactly where they are now.”
Since taking over the Jets last year, Glenn has made references to Campbell, and how his former boss gave him occasional head coaching responsibilities -- i.e. creating the Lions’ practice scripts and allowing him to address the entire team, not just the defense. Glenn believes those learning moments helped prepare him for his current position.
“That friendship,” Glenn said, “will always last.”
Naturally, Glenn’s goal is to create a Detroit-like turnaround, which took considerable patience by Lions ownership. Under Campbell, the Lions started 4-19-1 before that midseason flip in 2022.
In New York, Glenn’s record is 4-15, triggering intense criticism. The slow start hasn’t dented his confidence. After all, he lived it in Detroit, where his defensive schemes combined with Campbell’s leadership and motivational fury to change the perception of the franchise.
“They just fed off each other,” said Jets wide receiver Tim Patrick, who played for the Lions in 2024. “Dan was the vocal part about it, but AG’s energy carried the same thing Dan was speaking and they were just one.”
The best example of the synergy, Patrick said, was their pep talks before a Week 14 (Thursday night) game against the Green Bay Packers. In a now-celebrated speech, a fiery Campbell vowed to be aggressive with his playcalling and challenged the offense to compensate for an injury-riddled defense. Chiming in, Glenn declared the defense would keep it simple -- lots of man coverage and “hit everything you see,” Patrick recalled.
Undermanned, the Lions won 34-31.
The patriarch will be watching
Parcells has known Glenn for nearly 30 years, dating to 1997 -- when Parcells took over the Jets and Glenn was the star cornerback. Parcells coached Campbell for three seasons in Dallas, and they crossed paths again in 2010. Parcells was the Miami Dolphins’ executive vice president when Campbell was hired as a coaching intern.
“There’s no difference between them,” Parcells said. “I’ll tell you, they’re both highly competitive. They were very intense players, both of them, and I think it just makes it better because there’s a great deal of respect there for one another. But yet there’s also a respect for the competition that they provide each other.”
Parcells knows the feeling of coaching against a good friend. The Hall of Fame coach did it against Payton and Bill Belichick, two of the most famous branches on his coaching tree. He said it’s easy to separate personal emotions from competition.
“The personal never enters into it other than the pregame ‘How you doing?’ to the postgame ‘Good luck’ kind of thing,” Parcells said. “There’s a lot of mutual respect and amiability between coaches, even though they’re your fiercest rivals.
“My fiercest rival was [Washington’s] Joe Gibbs. We weren’t friendly, but we knew each other well. We were always amiable and it was high competition and we both knew it. We’ve talked about it since we’ve both been retired and how much fun those games were for both of us. You just maintain a kind of a -- I don’t know, underlying respect for the guy and the competition he provided you. And, hopefully, vice versa.”
Parcells will watch Jets-Lions focusing on the game within the game -- the “cat-and-mouse deal,” he called it. He meant the strategic back-and-forth between two coaches inside each other’s head. It should make for fascinating chess.
One coach will leave on a two-game losing streak, feeling as if he lost to a member of his own family.
“That’s the way it is,” Parcells said. “Sometimes you have to play against your friends.”
