Time for Jets to get a return on their Aaron Rodgers investment
New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers walks on the field during the second half of an NFL football game against the Buffalo Bills in East Rutherford, N.J., Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. Credit: AP/Adam Hunger
You’ve never seen a happier 2-4 quarterback on a three-game losing streak than Aaron Rodgers this week. Not even the twisted ankle that still throbs two weeks after it was wrenched in London or the aches that linger deeper and longer than ever before from getting pulverized in the pocket as a 40-year-old player seemed capable of wiping the smile off his face every time he appeared.
Why shouldn’t he be tickled?
He already had the offensive coordinator and even though Nathaniel Hackett isn’t calling plays any longer he has exercised remarkable job security for someone who has achieved what he has accomplished with the Jets.
He has his pal Allen Lazard at wide receiver, the player he’s been programming since he plucked him from the practice fields in Green Bay.
He’s got a new head coach who he hasn’t yet shoved on a sideline or gotten into a public spat with over his precious cadences.
He has the owner so emotionally invested in him and this Ralph Kramden-esqua scheme he’s come up with that he sees Rodgers as his latest (and maybe even last) best chance to turn the Jets into winners.
And now, after a year and a half of dropping not-so-subtle hints and winking this into fruition, he has Davante Adams, his go-to guy from their time together in Green Bay, bunking in his house in Jersey, driving with him to the facility and about to catch passes from him in his Jets debut on Sunday night in Pittsburgh.
Yep. The Aaron-ization of the Jets is just about complete.
Rodgers has gotten almost everything he could possibly want from an organization which has capitulated to his commands like a heeling dog freshly graduated from obedience school.
So what have the Jets gotten in return? Good question.
They are barely better than they were a year ago with a backup quarterback who was unable to function.
They have mortgaged whatever long-term future they had in the form of all the draft picks and prorated contracts required to assemble this team.
They are probably discouraging and maybe even alienating the young skill position players that they do have on their roster who are going to need second contracts very soon, and, oh yeah, just about everyone in the front office and coaching staff is about 10 weeks away from losing their jobs if things don’t improve mighty quickly.
In other words, this Faustian deal has provided them with almost nothing.
Which means it is time for the Jets to get some return on all these concessions they have been making. It’s time for Rodgers to start repaying his debts to them instead of simply walking around the building and the sideline as if the Jets owe him for having graced them with his presence.
It’s time for Rodgers to produce.
He can’t possibly have any more excuses. The Jets have followed the red line route he charted for them to the step, far better than poor old ostracized Mike Williams did on Monday night, and yet he hasn’t given them the thing that this entire agreement was supposed to deliver: A Hall of Fame-level quarterback who can transform the franchise into a contender.
Rodgers and the Jets have a winnable game against the Steelers on Sunday to start veering toward that objective. The following week they face the hapless Patriots, then host the Texans followed by games against the Cardinals and Colts. If Rodgers is still the quarterback the Jets thought they were getting they should be able to go into their Week 12 bye above .500.
It sounds like a solid plan except for one thing, the part about Rodgers being the quarterback the Jets thought they were getting. Despite some glimpses into that persona — he can still chuck those Hail Marys better than just about anyone who has every played — he has fallen well short of his own lofty standard. The last three losses have come with the ball in Rodgers’ hand late in a game with a chance to lead a tying or go-ahead drive and none of them have worked out. OK, he did get the Jets into makeable game-winning field goal range in the loss to the Broncos, but the last two were capped by interceptions.
If he has any magic left in him, if there is any trace of the four-time MVP still circulating through his creaky AARP-nearing body, it’s time to show it to all of us. It’s time to show it to the Jets.
It’s time for Rodgers to start making happiness a two-way street.
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.
