Jets' Aaron Rodgers might be facing his toughest challenge: When to say goodbye

Apparently there is still one guy who thinks Aaron Rodgers has a lot to offer as a quarterback beyond this season. Of course it’s his biggest fan.

Asked on Wednesday if this disappointing season has had any impact on his previously stated desires to play in 2025 (and potentially afterward), Rodgers said: “Not really.” So he plans on coming back? “I think so, yeah,” he said.

That’s obviously a little more wishy-washy than the definitive yeses Rodgers has given to such questions in the past. And there are another seven games this season that could change his mind. How he emerges from these next two months — mentally, emotionally and physically — will have much more bearing on whether or not he plays a 21st NFL season than these mid-November shrugs he gave on the topic.

But the fact he is genuinely open to it is baffling. There have been very few moments in this season to indicate that he is still now or ever will again be the elite quarterback who won four MVPs and a Super Bowl title (even if that Lombardi Trophy was earned before many of his current teammates were even in college). To the contrary, he has more often looked slow, broken down and a shell of that superstar the Jets thought they were getting when they traded for him back in April 2023.

This player we’ve watched hasn’t been close to his peak. He looks washed up, like any number of Hall of Famers we’ve seen hang on for too long, from Y.A. Tittle and Willie Mays in the black-and-white era to Tyron Smith and LaDainian Tomlinson, just to name two recent Jets.

He hasn’t been Rodgers the Jets’ Savior. He’s been Rodgers: Over, and out.

Oh sure, every once in a while there is a flash of what was. He gives enough of those Michael Jordan in a Wizards uniform moments to make us remember why he was so special as a player and one of the greatest to ever throw a football. But it’s not consistent. And it surely isn’t sustainable.

Even Rodgers concedes the lack of production.

“I'm not playing as well as I would have liked to play for sure,” he said. “The frustrating part is that, if you're a great competitor, you hold yourself to a standard and it's not unrealistic and I haven't reached that standard this year.”

So why have one eye on 2025 the way he does? Because it is hard to say goodbye. Because the competitive player is usually the last one to know that he’s finished. And because Rodgers is such a complicated person that his wants and needs go beyond winning and losing.

“You know, it's been actually a really beautiful couple years for me in in totality,” Rodgers said of his time in New York. “But it's obviously been frustrating with the football part.”

To Rodgers, it’s the first element he wants to cling to as long as possible. The locker room vibes, the camaraderie. The idolization from teammates and coaches and owners. Being the center of attention locally and nationally. That’s how he measures his time here as a success.

For the rest of us, though, it’s the football that matters most.

It should matter to the Jets, too. So what if Rodgers wants to play in 2025 as he’s under contract to do so. What makes anyone so sure that the next general manager or head coach to arrive in Florham Park this January will want it too? Or maybe they won’t even have a say in the matter.

Maybe Rodgers knows he’s done and knows that saying so now will only distract from the task at hand of trying to rescue this season. His saying “no” to the comeback question would certainly have created a larger ripple than his kinda sorta yes did. Then again, this is the guy who made sure all eyes were on him and his remarkable comeback from injury as he limped through practices last December while the rest of the team was struggling to stay together and stay relevant. Tamping down narratives — especially those that revolve around him — has never been his way.

In some regard this whole Rodgers Experiment has turned into the final thumbing of the nose from Tom Brady toward the Jets. Because he was able to switch teams, win a title, and play at an elite level into his mid-40s — he walked away and retired not off a season like these Jets are enduring but after leading the Bucs to the playoffs and after throwing for 351 yards in his final game — the assumption was anyone who put their mind to it could do it too. The argument was that Rodgers, who turns 41 in three weeks, could do it. That just hasn’t been the case.

Brady, of course, did not have to overcome a torn Achilles the way Rodgers did. That injury will forever stand as the big unanswered question in both his and the Jets’ enduring and now intertwined legacies. What might have been had that not happened four snaps into his first year with the team?

We’ll never know.

But we do know what is happening now. We are seeing it right in front of us. It’s not close to what was promised. And it offers no indication that it ever will be again. Not in 2024, not in 2025, and certainly not beyond.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.