Denver Broncos assistant coach Jim Leonhard and longtime NFL assistant Wink Martindale were among eight candidates interviewed by the New York Jets for their vacant defensive coordinator position.
The Jets announced Friday they also completed interviews — all through video meetings — this week with Chris Harris, who served as New York's interim defensive coordinator after Steve Wilks was fired last month, Mathieu Araujo, Ephraim Banda, DeMarcus Covington, Daronte Jones and Jim O’Neil.
Jets coach Aaron Glenn will next shorten the list and meet with remaining candidates for in-person interviews.
New York's defense was one of the NFL's worst during a 3-14 season, Glenn's first as head coach. Wilks was fired after 14 games and Harris, the Jets' defensive backs coach and pass game coordinator, took over the play calling.
“Compatibility is just as important as coachability,” Glenn said last week when asked about what he's looking for in a defensive coordinator. “So, I want to make sure we see things the same way and I want to make sure that we can vibe as far as sitting down and talking about how we see football.”
Leonhard, a former safety who played for the Jets from 2009-11, has some familiarity with Glenn. In Leonhard's final season as a player in 2014 for Cleveland, Glenn served as the Browns' assistant defensive backs coach.
Leonhard began his coaching career as an assistant at Wisconsin, his alma mater, in 2016 before becoming the Badgers' defensive coordinator and later the interim head coach in 2022. After one year at Illinois, Leonhard joined Sean Payton's staff in Denver as the defensive backs coach and pass game coordinator in 2024 before adding assistant head coach to his duties this season.
Martindale was the defensive coordinator at Michigan the last two seasons after a two-year stint in the same role with the Giants. After several college stops to begin his coaching career, Martindale had NFL stints with the Raiders, Broncos and Ravens.
Araujo spent the last four seasons with the Dolphins, first as an assistant defensive backs coach for Mike McDaniel and then as the cornerbacks coach.
Banda coached the Browns’ safeties the last three seasons under Kevin Stefanski after several college stops, including Texas, Mississippi State, Miami and Utah State.
Covington joined the Packers this season as their defensive line coach and run game coordinator after spending eight seasons with the Patriots, including last season as the defensive coordinator.
Jones has spent the last five seasons with the Vikings as the defensive backs coach and also served as the pass game coordinator the last three. He has also had NFL coaching stints with the Dolphins and Bengals.
O’Neil has been with the Lions the past two years, including the 2024 season when Glenn was the defensive coordinator in Detroit. He's a defensive assistant who also coaches the Lions' safeties. He was a defensive quality control coach for the Jets in 2009 and their assistant defensive backs coach from 2010-12. O'Neil also has spent time with the Bills, Browns, 49ers and Raiders.
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FILE - New York Giants defensive coordinator Don "Wink" Martindale during an NFL football game against the Philadelphia Eagles, in Philadelphia, Dec. 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Rich Schultz, File)
FILE - Wisconsin interim head coach Jim Leonhard leads warmups before playing against Nebraska in an NCAA college football game in Lincoln, Neb., Nov. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Rebecca S. Gratz)
NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices rose Monday following the latest fighting to threaten the U.S.-Iran ceasefire, but Wall Street isn’t very worried, and U.S. stocks ticked to more records.
The S&P 500 added 0.3% to its prior all-time high set on Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 46 points, or 0.1%, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.4% to likewise set records.
A slight majority of U.S. stocks actually fell, including companies with big fuel bills hurt by higher oil prices. United Airlines lost 2.6%, and Alaska Air Group fell 3.3% after the price for a barrel of Brent crude oil climbed 4.2% to settle at $94.98. That clawed back a chunk of Brent’s loss from last week and means it’s still well above its price of roughly $70 from before the war.
Expensive oil has already sent inflation higher, which increases not only bills for households but also yields in the bond market. High yields worldwide recently have threatened to slow economies and undercut prices for stocks and all kinds of other investments.
But yields regressed during the day after oil prices came off their highest levels. That eased some of the pressure on Wall Street, and the Russell 2000 index of the smallest U.S. stocks went from a loss of 1.3% back to roughly even before finishing with a dip of 0.5%. Small companies can feel the pinch of higher borrowing costs in particular because of the need for many to borrow to grow.
Hope, meanwhile, seems to remain on Wall Street that the United States and Iran will ultimately reach an agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, allow deliveries of oil to resume from the Persian Gulf and ease the upward pressure on inflation.
Strength from several market heavyweights also helped to power Wall Street.
Nvidia was the strongest force lifting the market and rose 6.2% after CEO Jensen Huang announced several product updates at a conference. What Nvidia does matters immensely for the U.S. stock market because it’s the biggest in terms of overall market value. That means the movements for its stock carry more weight on the S&P 500 than any other’s.
And Wall Street’s biggest companies have been growing so much that they’re dominating the market. The top 10 stocks control nearly half the S&P 500’s total market value, a 40-year high, according to Thomas Carroll, equity market strategist at Stifel.
That worked well as Big Tech stocks shot higher thanks to exuberance around artificial intelligence. But it could also weigh on the index if the market’s leadership broadens, Carroll warns. Even if most stocks end up rising in such a rotation, stagnation or declines for Big Tech heavyweights could drag on S&P 500 index funds.
A key indicator Carroll follows about market breadth “is signaling a rotation is coming,” he wrote in a report.
Elsewhere on Wall Street, Science Applications International Corp. jumped 10.4% after becoming the latest U.S. company to report bigger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. SAIC also raised forecasts for upcoming financial results.
A cavalcade of such better-than-expected profit reports has helped the U.S. stock market push to records despite the uncertainty created by the war with Iran.
Berkshire Hathaway fell 0.9% after saying it would buy homebuilder Taylor Morrison Home for $6.8 billion. It’s one of the first big acquisitions announced by the company since Greg Abel took over as its leader from famed investor Warren Buffett. Taylor Morrison Home jumped 22.3%.
MGM Resorts International leaped 16.1% after People Inc., Barry Diller’s business that was formerly known as IAC, offered to buy the rest of the company it doesn’t already own for $48.30 per share in cash.
All told, the S&P 500 rose 19.90 points to 7,599.96. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 46.42 to 51,078.88, and the Nasdaq composite rose 114.19 to 27,086.81.
In the bond market, Treasury yields climbed with oil prices and after a report said growth in U.S. manufacturing accelerated by more last month than economists expected. The yield for the 10-year Treasury briefly approached 4.52% before regressing to 4.46%, up from 4.45% late Friday.
High yields have already forced the average long-term U.S. mortgage rate to its most expensive level in nine months, and they could curtail companies’ borrowing to build the AI data centers that have supported the U.S. economy’s growth recently.
In stock markets abroad, indexes fell in Europe following a stronger finish in Asia.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.9% to an all-time high. SoftBank Group, the investment company that focuses heavily on AI, soared 21.2% and surpassed Toyota to become Japan’s most valuable listed company.
In South Korea, the Kospi index jumped 3.7% to a record after data showed the country’s exports surged 53% in May from a year earlier, buoyed by global demand for semiconductors.
AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Matt Ott contributed.
Trader Edward Curran works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Specialists Philip Finale, left, and Meric Greenbaum work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Friday, May 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Currency traders work near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A currency trader talks on the phone at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
