Aaron Rodgers gets a taste of that Jets misery in brutal loss to Broncos
Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers (8) leaves the field in defeat after the Broncos beat the Jets on Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024. Credit: Lee S. Weissman
For two weeks, we got to see what Aaron Rodgers could do for the Jets. The comeback win in Tennessee. The dominant home victory over New England.
It was glorious and it had the entire organization and its fans expecting the upward trend to continue. How far, they must have wondered, could the 40-year-old quarterback with the silver arm and silver beard carry them?
On Sunday, though, nothing felt quite like it was supposed to.
Sure, the uncomfortable rain played a part in that, soaking MetLife Stadium and its denizens throughout most of the afternoon, but there were other omens lurking as well.
The Jets attempted to introduce a few dozen of their alumni before current player introductions and the production was off as the cameras tried to keep pace with the announcements. The pyrotechnics intended to excite the crowd led only to a hovering cloud of smoke that nearly gagged the entire lower bowl. Even the one thing this team has gotten right over the years — the J-E-T-S chant before the opening kickoff — was so mistimed that it left Fireman Ed wincing in disgust before a play was run.
That grimace soon spread and quickly became the official countenance of this sloppy, subpar performance that resulted in a disheartening 10-9 loss to the Broncos. It was the same face Rodgers himself probably wore as the Jets’ 50-yard field-goal attempt at taking the lead with 47 seconds remaining drifted wide right to secure their fate, but it was impossible to know for sure because he already had draped a towel over his head.
After seeing that gorgeous glimpse of what Rodgers could do for the Jets, this was the game in which we saw what the Jets can do to Rodgers. And just as the former was surprisingly promising, this was shockingly dismal.
Penalties. Missed opportunities. Blown assignments. They all piled up to create this eyesore of a result and a loss to a rookie quarterback in Bo Nix, who threw for only 60 yards. He was so off in his own passing accuracy that his one touchdown pass, the first of his career, to a wide-open Courtland Sutton in the back of the end zone in the third quarter required an acrobatic leap and toe-tap just to be completed.
It was a flashback to the way things were in recent years when the defense so often played well enough to win but the offense was unable to score. This time, however, it wasn’t Zach Wilson playing quarterback for the Jets. It was a Hall of Famer and four-time MVP.
Wilson, the emergency quarterback for the Broncos, must have gotten some satisfaction from leaving the building with a victory after his mere presence seemed to apply his bad mojo on his former team.
It was only the fifth time in Rodgers’ 20-year career, including the postseason, that his offense failed to score a touchdown, and in two of the other four, he left the game injured. This time he nearly did, battered by a Broncos defense that played the entire game as if it knew which plays were being run . . . which is more than could be said for the Jets themselves. Wrong routes and false starts were a near-constant bugaboo.
Rodgers wasn’t at his best. Even he admitted that. “I missed some throws,” he said. “The weather sucked, but so did some of my throws.”
The problem: There was no one to help pick him up, help carry the load.
Breece Hall had only 4 rushing yards on 10 carries. Braelon Allen did a little better with 34 on eight handoffs. Garrett Wilson caught five passes, but two of them went for a yard or less and another resulted in a fumble after a short gain.
Jets coach Robert Saleh was befuddled by the plague of pre- and post-snap penalties that occurred, but the Jets have long been an undisciplined team in that regard under his watch.
“Unacceptable,” he said. “We gotta figure it out.”
Four years in, he still hasn’t done that. When Saleh suggested that the Jets dumb down Rodgers’ advanced cadences to avoid all those jumps and illegal motions, Rodgers balked. Loudly.
“That’s one way to do it,” the quarterback said. “The other way is to hold them accountable.”
It was almost as if no one had thought of that until Rodgers said it aloud.
Even when the Jets did things well, such as the 12-yard catch by Allen Lazard late in the third quarter that brought them to the Denver 18, they countered it with dense actions. Lazard was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct for using his fingers as guns to celebrate the catch and the Jets had to settle for a field goal and a 9-7 lead on a drive that finally was pushing toward the end zone.
The real zingers, though, were the two passes Rodgers threw to Wilson and Xavier Gipson with less than two minutes remaining in which the receivers were not even looking for the ball, the unblocked blitz that forced a sack and turnover on downs with 1:46 remaining, and a hurried incompletion Rodgers threw toward Mike Williams on third-and-6 with 51 seconds left when a few more yards might have made the last-ditch kick a bit more manageable.
“We let this one get away,” Rodgers said.
It was a new feeling for him, his first real taste of the “same old” part of the franchise he is trying to recast in a championship form. For the rest of the Jets and those who have been watching for a while, though, it is more commonplace.
If these Jets are going to fulfill the promise Rodgers brought with him when he arrived here, the rest of them — players and coaches — have to be able to rise at least close to his level and not drag him to their all-too-familiar depths.
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.