Aaron Rodgers' Jets career: In with a bang, out with a whimper

Aaron Rodgers will turn 41 on Monday in a much different place than he was a year ago for the big 4-0.

Way, way back in December 2023, when he hit that milestone age, there was anticipation that we finally might  get to see Rodgers on the field with the Jets. He was just starting to tease us with the fabulous tale of his recovery from Achilles surgery, just beginning to step back out on the practice fields. He was laying the groundwork for the idea that if the Jets somehow could manage to hang on to relevance and keep their dimming playoff hopes alive for a few more weeks, he could return and push them over the top.

It didn’t happen.

Now here we are just 12 months later, and instead of wondering if we’ll get to see Rodgers play his first full game for the Jets, we’re left contemplating the possibility that we  soon will see his last . . . or perhaps that we already have.

That’s something the league must brace itself for, and while in most circles and cities it will be seen with a wisp of nostalgia at the end of a legendary career, the start of a countdown to Canton, around here we’ll look at it a little differently. A little more complicatedly. As we usually do.

Rodgers’ two years with the Jets delivered nothing of what was promised. He leaves the Jets in more disarray, dysfunction and laughable drama than he found them, an impressive achievement in itself.

As Jerry Seinfeld once said on his eponymous sitcom: “Birthdays are merely symbolic of how another year's gone by and how little we've grown. No matter how desperate we are that someday a better self will emerge, with each flicker of the candles on the cake, we know it's not to be, that for the rest of our sad, wretched, pathetic lives, this is who we are to the bitter end, inevitably, irrevocably.”

Rodgers may not necessarily feel that way on this year’s celebration. The Jets, their fans and the shambles and skeletons of an organization he  soon will leave behind, though? They are the ones who almost certainly can relate.

Rodgers has started every game this season and taken just about every snap. He’s trudged through the aches and pains of approaching middle age that have been compounded by his weekly beatings, and he even made a quick diversion from the blue medical tent to remain in the action when the Jets played in London in October. This week, coming back from a bye, he isn’t even on the injury report.

But that doesn’t mean he or the Jets are in anything approaching good health.

Just a few weeks ago, Rodgers seemed certain he would play next season. Now he’s not so sure. If he does play, he wants it to be for the Jets, but there has been no indication that the feeling is mutual.

Interim  head coach Jeff Ulbrich said there are no plans to bench or shut down Rodgers. Of course, there were no plans to have an interim head coach at this point, either. As Ulbrich has learned all too well, things can change in a hurry.

Rodgers should have known what he was getting into when that car pulled up in front of his house in Malibu two Januarys ago, unable even to follow the instructions of not parking conspicuously on the street. That’s when Woody Johnson, Joe Douglas and Robert Saleh arrived to make their pitch to him to come play for the Jets. Whatever they said to him worked. That’s really the last thing that did in this cockamamie caper.

The team already has gotten rid of two of the three who tied their reputations and careers to this idea. Saleh and Douglas paid for it with their jobs. Now Rodgers is the last man standing . . .  at least for the time being. He, too,  eventually will be brought down by the arrogance and ham-handedness of it all.

Meanwhile, as almost always happens, the purported mastermind behind the scheme, in this case Johnson, will dream up his next escapade and assemble a new crew.

So here we stand, with six games left in the season and maybe that many left from Rodgers. Ever.

Frankly, it will be a shock if he lasts that long. Either the imminent elimination from playoff contention will have him rethinking his devotion to this year’s squad or an injury will befall him, and that will be that.

Afterward, he’ll go back to being Aaron Rodgers of the Packers, Aaron Rodgers the four-time MVP, Aaron Rodgers the Super Bowl champion, and Aaron Rodgers the first-ballot Hall of Famer. He’ll move on to podcasting or politics or whatever kind of carnival barking career tickles him. His time with the Jets will be a forgettable blip on his resume.

Next year on Dec. 2, he’ll turn 42. Then 43 the year after that. Football will be past tense.

Around here, though, his tenure will leave far more scars than satisfaction. It began with a crashing thud. Now it seems as if it will end that way, too.

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.